


The Line in the Sand

by KouriArashi



Series: The Sum of Its Parts [7]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BAMF Stiles, F/M, Hunters, Hurt Stiles, M/M, Magic, Multi, Mystery, PTSD, Pack Dynamics, Pack Feels, Wolf Cuddles, because I always hurt Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 04:46:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 62,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1155255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KouriArashi/pseuds/KouriArashi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a friend shows up on Stiles' doorstep asking for help, Stiles knows he can't refuse. What he doesn't know is that he's walking into a trap designed just for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, I think I've given up on this series having anything to do with canon. Enjoy!

 

It’s the day after Christmas, and all through the Stilinski house, everyone is stirring. Loudly, and in Stiles’ case, literally.

Stiles is in the kitchen and the mixer is running, because somebody got him a waffle maker and he read somewhere that you can put cake batter in a waffle maker and make cake waffles. This is something that obviously demands attention right away. Scott and Isaac are in the living room, playing video games. Derek is in his usual position, perched on the kitchen counter so he can sketch, and although he wouldn’t admit it, he’s singing along to the Christmas carols that Stiles is blasting on the radio. He has a passable baritone. Sheriff Stilinski is in the garage, playing with a sanding belt that he got and talking about building a cabinet or something. Carpentry is a hobby of his, not a skill, so nobody has high expectations of this cabinet, and as long as he has fun, nobody will complain.

Melissa is working an overnight shift at the hospital, so it’s just the guys. The rest of the pack are with their respective families, although Lydia is staying at Allison’s because her mother is in Italy. If it bothers her, she gives no sign of it.

Stiles has just put the first of the batter in the waffle maker when he glances up suddenly. Derek notices and gives him a questioning look. “I think an alpha’s somewhere nearby,” Stiles says, and Derek nods and goes back to his sketch. The longer Stiles is the alpha, and the larger and more powerful the pack becomes, the more sensitive he’s becoming.

“Gonna call Chris?” Derek asks.

“Nah. I’ll wait and see if something happens,” Stiles says. Alpha werewolves are people too, and sometimes they just need to cross into his territory on their way through, or for human reasons. It’s considered polite to request permission first, but not everybody bothers. Besides, it’s Christmas. He doesn’t want to bother the Argents if he doesn’t have to, which is an attitude he’s five hundred percent sure Chris would not approve of.

But everything has been surprisingly quiet in the supernatural world lately. He had been able to spend his entire autumn semester in Neptune without any issue. What had happened there had been an isolated incident rather than part of a larger pattern. Even Chris agrees that things are calm.

There are multiple reasons for this, and Stiles knows that he himself is one of them. The alliance he’s managed to forge with Chris Argent has given others encouragement to try the same sort of thing. He’ll be the first to admit that plenty of werewolves just aren’t interested. Many have lost friends or packmates to the hunters, and aren’t going to give them the time of day. But some of them aren’t like that. And as Allison continues to keep up contact with some of the younger hunters they befriended at the conclave, things are gradually shifting.

But werewolves in general have just been less violent lately. Chris has reported fewer incidences of young alphas losing themselves to their power, or people being turned without consent, and even smaller packs joining together to form large ones rather than recruiting new wolves. Chris isn’t sure what’s behind the shift, and neither is Stiles. He keeps his nose out of it, though. Some things, he’s just not curious about.

This alpha, though, whoever it is, just lingers at the edge of his senses. They seem weak for an alpha. An alpha without a pack, Derek says, when Stiles mentions this. He supposes it’s possible that an alpha might come here to try to kill Stiles and take control of his pack. It would be an extremely foolish idea, but then, some people are fools. Stiles is wondering how to go about suggesting they go back to the den for the night, with all its security and cameras, without freaking anybody out. Before he can make a decision, there’s a pounding at the front door.

“Who could that be?” Stilinski asks, coming in from the garage with sawdust all over the knees of his jeans.

Stiles smacks the power button on the stereo as Derek hops off the counter, and heads for the door. He doesn’t argue when Derek steps in front of him, obviously intending to open the door himself. Some things he simply isn’t allowed, and ‘go first when there might be danger’ is always one of them. Isaac and Scott are up, too, the former standing tall for once, none of his usual hunched shoulders.

He’s not sure who he’s expecting, there are so many possibilities, but when Derek swings the door open, it reveals one of the last ones he would have guessed. A petite young woman with tanned skin, long black hair, and dark eyes framed by dark lashes stands there. Her name is Yasmin Ortega, and Stiles hasn’t seen her for over a year and a half. That was when the alpha pack had given him his trial. Yasmin was the youngest, weakest, and least aggressive of the alpha pack – not that those descriptions meant much when talking about the strongest pack in the world.

The last time he had seen her had been outside the Hale house. She had been standing tall and proud, with Justin’s arm looped around her waist. Now she’s glancing over her shoulder even as Derek opens the door. There are dark circles under her eyes, and her dark skin is a few shades paler than usual. Blood has stained her shirt in two separate places, and there’s a smear of it underneath one eye. She’s holding one arm gingerly across her chest.

“Yas,” Stiles says, a little too surprised to manage anything else.

Yasmin heaves a sigh of relief that’s almost a sob. “Stiles,” she says. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know where else to go, who else to turn to. I – I need – I can’t find Justin. I should always be able to find him and I can’t.”

Stiles knows from personal, painful experience how traumatizing being separated from one’s lupa can be. He stands back and says, “Come in.” Derek shuts the door behind her. “Scott,” Stiles says, waving him forward.

“Yeah.” Scott drags over a chair and gets Yasmin sitting down. He takes her arm and gives it a gentle squeeze, and she lets out a little yip of pain. “Broken,” he says. The blood on her shirt is from what looks like claw marks.

“Why isn’t it healing?” Stiles asks, mostly rhetorically. He doesn’t expect Scott to whip out an answer.

“Sheriff Stilinski, can you get me a few pieces of wood from your workshop?” Scott asks. “About six or eight inches long, not too thick.”

“Sure,” Stilinski says, and heads back out to the garage.

Stiles drags another chair over so he can sit down facing Yasmin. Derek is at his shoulder, hovering. “Yasmin, tell me what happened.”

She takes a few deep breaths. “We were in Oregon. Near Columbia River Gorge. We had just finished a trial in Idaho and were just laying low for a few days, staying at a hotel. One of those lodges up there. We were in the woods. Just playing. Burning off some energy. The full moon is coming. And . . . something attacked us. I never got a good look at it. It seemed . . . insect-like? But big. _Really_ big.

“Justin shouted for me to run. I saw Mei – go down. I could smell her blood. And then I couldn’t see anything. It was so _dark_. So I ran. I ran until I couldn’t hear it anymore. And then I waited. But nothing happened. After about an hour, I tracked back to where we had been. But there was no one there anymore. Just a lot of crushed trees and foliage. And blood. I tried to find Justin, but . . .” A wolf whine escapes her throat. “I couldn’t. I can’t feel him anymore. He could be dead and I wouldn’t know.”

“I’m pretty sure you would know that,” Stiles says. “What about the others?”

Yasmin shakes her head. “Because we’re all alphas, we don’t bond to each other the way a normal pack does. They could have been nearby and I wouldn’t have necessarily known. The smell of blood was so strong that it covered everything else.”

“How did you even get here?” Isaac asks.

“I drove,” she says. “We had a car. I . . . I waited at the hotel for a day, but when nobody else showed up, I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit around and wait for him to come home.”

“Jesus,” Scott says. “You’re lucky you didn’t cause an accident. You’ve got one hell of a concussion.”

“Please,” Yasmin says, clutching at Stiles’ hands, crimson starting to seep into her eyes. “Please help me find Justin. I don’t know what else to do.”

“Yasmin, it’s going to be fine,” Stiles says firmly, glancing up as his father comes in with the pieces of wood. He hears Derek give an almost inaudible sigh behind him, but it doesn’t bother him. Derek knows him; he knows there’s no way he would leave a friend in danger or say no to a request like that. Derek’s hand brushes his shoulder, and then he wanders away, probably to call the rest of the pack. “We’re going to find Justin, okay? Now let Scott take care of your arm.”

Yasmin swallows and nods. She grits her teeth as Scott takes her arm and, with help from Isaac, gets the splint around it.

“That creature has to be magical,” Stiles says, almost to himself. “Given the way the wounds didn’t heal. Tell Lydia to make sure she brings the bestiary.”

Derek nods and continues texting. Since the pack keeps getting larger, Stiles has relied on him more and more to keep everyone calm and content. It’s not a problem, Derek says. Traditionally, that’s the role of the lupa in any case: to stand-in for the alpha if he’s too busy or his hands are full with someone else. The fact that Stiles needs to delegate is the sign of a healthy pack – and it’s also a sign that Stiles himself is becoming healthier, that he’s willing to let others help with things.

Once Yasmin’s arm is splinted, Scott doses her with some heavy-duty painkillers, and minutes later she’s asleep, curled up in a corner. She’s obviously exhausted, and Stiles tries to keep everyone quiet although he doubts she’ll wake. By the time she’s asleep, the rest of the pack are showing up. Derek has given them the bare bones of what’s happened; Stiles fills in the details.

“So,” he says, “we are leaving for Oregon.” He looks at his watch. “Now. Tonight. We’ll make the drive overnight so we can be there first thing in the morning. I know that’s probably a problem for some of you.”

Danny and Boyd both shift uncomfortably. Mac plays with her hair, then says, tentatively, “I’m not the only one with parents who don’t know, right?”

“Right,” Danny says. “It’s about half and half now. Me, Boyd, and Lydia are the ones with parents in the dark. Well, and Isaac, but his dad doesn’t count.”

“So . . . what do we do?” Mac asks.

“That’s up to you,” Stiles says. “I can understand if you don’t want to. If you think it’ll be easier to sell them some fiction, like . . .” He looks at Lydia.

“Winter spa retreat,” Lydia says. “Not that my mom will notice, since she’s in Italy.”

“Like that,” Stiles says. “And if you need a parent to cover, one is always available.”

“I just . . . I don’t want them to freak out,” Mac says.

Danny nods. “My problem with telling them has been less not wanting them to freak out about me being a werewolf, and more not wanting them to freak out about how-and-or-why I became one. It was kind of a scary story, you know?”

“I’ll have to tell them,” Boyd says, sinking into a chair. “They were wary enough of the semester in Neptune. They are not going to accept ‘winter spa retreat’. Not on the day after Christmas. And my little brothers have been getting more and more nosy lately. They know something’s up. But if I just throw it in their faces and take off, it’s going to be a disaster.”

“Do . . . do we all have to go to Oregon?” Mac asks.

“Rule number one, sweetie,” Erica says, “we do not discourage Stiles from _not_ charging headlong into danger without the rest of us.”

“I think we’re on rule six hundred and twelve by now,” Mac says, “but okay.”

“The pack sticks together,” Scott tells her. “We’re stronger that way. Last summer when the hunter conclave was in town, we tried splitting up. It was a really bad idea and it didn’t work out for anybody.”

“I think the best solution is that we will split up very _briefly_ ,” Stiles says. “Those of us who can leave tonight will. Those who can’t, take this evening or tomorrow morning to break whatever news to your parents that you see fit. Mac, if you want to go with ‘winter spa retreat’, just tell your parents tonight that Allison invited you. Her dad will back you up if they want to talk to him. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to say when we’ll be back, but just tell them it’s for three days and we’ll burn that bridge if we get to it.”

Mac nods. “Okay, yeah. I think I’ll go with that.”

Stiles turns to Boyd and Danny. “If you need moral support, one of the other parents is going to have to step in. Dad, help them out?”

Sheriff Stilinski nods. “I can be available if they have questions or need an adult to tell them that they’re not going to lose their little cupcake.”

Danny nods. “Thanks,” he says, and Boyd echoes him.

“Okay,” Stiles says. “Those of you who are going tonight, talk to your parents, get some stuff, meet back here in an hour. Erica . . . don’t antagonize your father. If he wants to talk to me, just call me. Okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Erica says, with a huff.

Stiles glances around the room, considering, and then says, “Jake, I think you had better stay here.”

“But - !” Jake protests.

Stiles shakes his head. “I know that you want to be part of this pack, but you’re not, yet. And no offense, but you don’t have the same experience that the rest of us do. Tangling with something that can take down alphas is _not_ going to be your first rodeo.”

Jake slumps a little and says, “Okay, but – call me if you need, need research or anything, okay?”

“You got it,” Stiles replies.

Once the pack has dispersed, Stiles goes up to his room to pack his stuff. Derek has headed back to the den, and Stiles texts him a list of things to grab. Allison has a list as well, things she’ll want from the armory. Isaac decides to go with Derek and help him pack up. He trusts Scott to throw some of his clothes into a backpack for him.

Most of the weaponry is at the den, but Stiles keeps his baseball bat and his gun with him at all times (barring school, where they don’t look kindly on such things). He packs those and a few clips of ammunition, then some clothes, including two of his red sweatshirts. Official pack business entails the need for the official clothes. Then he goes down to the kitchen and stuffs a cooler full of sodas, a bag full of chips and crackers for the drive, and two thermoses full of coffee. Scott will take care of medical supplies, so he doesn’t have to worry about that. Derek will grab his chain mail.

He feels woefully underprepared, but has no idea what he might be facing. They all have their protection charms, but he knows that those only protect them from long-range sorcery. It won’t defend them against a magical creature. He packs away a bag of mountain ash, his vials of wolfsbane, and all the books that he can fit into his laptop bag along with the computer itself. It makes him nervous to be leaving Beacon Hills, where all his support is. But he won’t solve this mystery long-distance.

When he comes downstairs, Scott is back from his own house and has talked from his mother. He checks Yasmin’s temperature and says she doesn’t have a fever. She stirs underneath his hand. “We’re leaving in a few minutes,” Stiles tells her, and her eyes fill with tears. “When was the last time you ate?”

“I . . . I don’t even know,” Yasmin says, and laughs a little. “You must think I’m the most pathetic alpha ever.”

“Hardly,” Stiles says. “I know what it’s like to have someone put a magical whammy and cut me off from my lupa. So I’m probably the only alpha you’d find who actually knows what you’re going through. It’s freaky as hell. But, we are going to go find Justin’s lost ass, and then we’ll give him hell for scaring you. Right?”

“Right,” Yasmin says, and lets out a breath. “Food. And, uh, a weapon would be awesome. I won’t be able to fully shift with my arm splinted, I guess.”

“We’ll get you something when Derek gets back from the den,” Stiles says, and ushers her into the kitchen, where he can make her something to eat. Before long, Allison, Derek, Erica, and Isaac have returned. “Any problems at home?” he asks Erica, and she shakes her head.

“Lydia decided to wait for the others,” Allison tells Stiles. “In case Mac needs help with her parents, and also just because . . . someone should stay with them.”

Stiles nods, approving this decision. The ones staying behind are the newest of his pack. Although Danny’s been a werewolf for over a year now, he never quite took to it the way the others did. And Mac has barely been a ‘wolf for two months, if one doesn’t count her time as the kanima. She still needs a lot of training. He feels better leaving Lydia behind to look after her. “Okay.” To Allison, he adds, “Yas needs a weapon. Something light.”

Allison nods and pulls out a knife. “Careful with it,” she says to Yasmin. “Silver in the notches.”

Yasmin nods and gives it a close look before sheathing it. “Thanks. Got a hair tie?” she adds, pushing her long hair out of her face. “Jesus, I’m a hot mess.”

“I’ll braid it for you,” Erica says.

Derek and Isaac start loading up the Jeep. Stiles is about to help, when his father pulls him aside. “If you get in trouble up there, I won’t be able to help you very much,” he says.

Stiles nods. “I know.”

“Be careful, kid.”

Stiles hugs him, hard. “I will be. I promise.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

They have to take two cars. Stiles decides to ride with Yasmin and let Scott drive his Jeep. Derek goes with him; Erica, Isaac, and Allison go with Scott. Stiles takes the time to pump Yasmin’s memory for any scrap of detail that she can remember. Things she smelled, the sounds the monster made, anything she might have heard or seen at the hotel the day before that was out of the ordinary.

“I don’t know if I’m being very helpful,” she says at one point, as Stiles taps away at his phone.

“I don’t know if you are either, yet,” Stiles says, “but you never know what might come in handy.”

They stop twice to change drivers. Stiles takes two shifts, since Yasmin’s not up to driving, and he has plenty of experience staying up for several days straight with black coffee and Adderall as his guide. “Aw, hell, what’s today?” he asks, yawning as the sun is rising on their right.

“The twenty-seventh, why?” Derek asks.

“I’m gonna have to text Gwen. I have an appointment tomorrow.”

“Who’s Gwen?” Yasmin asks sleepily.

Stiles gives her a glance and says, “She’s my therapist.” It’s a tone of voice that almost dares her to giggle.

She doesn’t. She just gives him a sideways little glance and then says, “Maybe that’s why you’re so much better at holding your shit together than half the alphas we meet. Because you can actually admit you need a therapist.”

“Back when I really needed one, I couldn’t admit it,” Stiles says dryly, but lets it go. “How’s the alpha trial business going lately? I guess the question ‘do you have any enemies’ is both necessary and probably impossible to answer.”

“No, it . . . it hasn’t been that bad lately, actually.” Yasmin reaches for the coffee she got at their last rest stop, tastes it, and makes a face at how tepid its become. “Justin’s kind of . . . been changing things up. I mean, it’s not like there was ever an official rule book we needed to follow. And he hated anything that made him like Kali.”

“Changing things up, how?” Stiles asks, frowning.

“He introduced a middle ground. A probationary period.” Yasmin takes another drink of her coffee. “So many of the alphas we met – not just since he became the leader, but back while Kali and even Trevor were in charge – were terrible alphas, but not because they were terrible people. They just didn’t _know_ any better. You stumbled into doing things right most of the way, but it’s not like anyone was holding your hand and telling you what to do. You were a natural. But not everyone who becomes an alpha is like that. And hell, you know better than anyone that not everyone who becomes an alpha was asking for it or even realized it was going to happen.”

Stiles is nodding slowly. Some pieces are starting to fall into place. “So what did the probation grade entail?”

“Some alphas still fail flat-out, don’t get me wrong,” Yasmin says. “But if we were doing a trial and Justin thought that their heart was basically in the right place, that they were _trying_ to do right by their pack, he would just say ‘okay, we’re gonna come back in six months’. We would sit down with the pack and tell them how things _should_ be. And Justin would give them his number and tell them to call if they had any questions.”

“Did they?” Derek asks, leaning over the seat.

“Yeah,” Yasmin says. “More than even he expected. It got to the point that he started matching up each probationary alpha to one of us, like a big-brother-big-sister type deal,” she adds, laughing. “So not _everyone_ would be texting or calling him all the time. I’ve got two in my phone book right now.”

“Have you gone back for any of your six-month follow-ups yet?” Stiles asks.

“Yeah, a bunch of them. Most of them are doing a lot better. Some of them aren’t. He failed two or three after their probation. One of them dissolved their pack outright and became omega because he just _knew_ he sucked at it and wasn’t going to get any better, and he didn’t want Justin to fail him. And a couple he just extended their probation another six months, because they were doing better, but not better enough to pass.”

“This explains a _fuck_ of a lot about how quiet things have been lately,” Stiles says. “Justin is single-handedly changing the fabric of werewolf society.”

Derek’s nodding. “It used to be, every new alpha needed to build up power as quickly as possible, because they knew the trial was coming. That’s why a lot of them go nuts and change a bunch of betas, with or without consent.”

“And as each individual alpha on probation gets better, other people are probably finding out about it,” Stiles says, “and going to those alphas for advice just as those alphas go to you guys. It’s a new, stabilizing hierarchy that’s never existed before.”

Yasmin knuckles tears away. “Justin is – he’s just so _good_. You know? And he knew that Trevor took a chance on him, that he didn’t have to. He wants to pay that back.”

“As fascinating as this is,” Stiles says, “I’m at a loss as to how it might have anything to do with what’s going on. You’d think this would be making you guys friends, not enemies.”

“We have gotten a couple ‘why did so-and-so get probation but I fail’,” Yasmin says, “but . . . those people aren’t around to cause us trouble.” She gives a little shrug. “We’re the alpha pack. We’re brutal when we have to be.”

Stiles nods, thinking this over. He had never doubted that the alpha pack would kill his entire pack if the trial has necessitated it. But none of that helps him figure out what to do now. “I’m sort of surprised I hadn’t heard anything about it,” he says.

Yasmin shifts a little. “I think . . . a lot of people don’t trust you,” she says, and he glances over at her. “What you’re doing with the hunters is really interesting, and I want to see if it’ll work as badly as anyone. But some people see you as a traitor.”

“A lot of hunters see Chris Argent the same way,” Stiles says, with a sigh. “Change takes time, I guess. I’ll straddle the fence as long as I can. There are good people and bad people on both sides. But eventually I’ll be forced to pick one. I guess, when that time comes, I’ll probably be as surprised as anyone to find out which side I choose.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I uh.... may have just made up a different backstory for the twins. Because I kind of established the whole "omega = wolf without a pack" not "omega = bootlickers of the pack" thing, so I couldn't really use their canon backstory, and uh, yeah. I don't really have an excuse for this. ^_^;;;

 

It’s a two hour hike into the middle of the wilderness, long past the point of niceties like trails, to get to where the attack took place. Fortunately, Stiles is becoming accustomed to this level of physical exertion. He still has fond memories of when he’d been a pale, skinny dork, and when Scott couldn’t climb a flight of stairs without needing his inhaler. Those times are long past.

It’s in the thirties, but sunny, so they start out bundled up but gradually start to get warm from the exercise and unbutton their coats. Derek would rather be in wolf form, and is grumbling about this, but Stiles won’t let him shift because nobody wants to carry his winter gear. Yasmin has taken another dose of painkillers, and she does all right, although she’s starting to flag near the end of the trek.

First things first. Stiles stands just before the destruction starts and closes his eyes, and just breathes. It’s not his territory, so his senses aren’t as keen as they could be, but he can still feel the muffled discomfort of Yasmin standing next to him, another alpha that’s a potential threat. But he doesn’t feel anything else. If there’s a monster nearby, it isn’t a wolf.

“Okay,” he finally says. It’s quiet, ‘too quiet’, he resists the urge to remark ominously. But it is. He can’t hear any birds, although he supposes he has no idea what sort of wildlife one would expect during an Oregon winter. “Smells?”

“Bitter,” Scott says immediately, his noise wrinkling. “It’s . . .”

“Acrid,” Derek supplies the word he’s looking for. He gives Stiles a quick shake of his head. “And totally unfamiliar. I’ve never smelled anything like it before.”

Stiles gives a little nod. Then he paces around the perimeter of the ‘crime scene’, as he’s starting to think of it. It’s big, about fifty feet in diameter. Entire branches have been broken off trees, as high as twenty feet in the air. There are crushed bushes and gouges in the snow and dirt. He sees splotches of blood, now old enough to be a rusty red-brown, in the snow and on the leaves. One patch of it is particularly large. He gives Yasmin a questioning look to see if she can identify it by smell. “Mei,” she chokes out, holding a hand over her nose.

Erica reaches out and squeezes Yasmin’s hand. None of them say anything else about it. It’s a lot of blood, but not so much that they can say for sure if Mei is dead. Especially not knowing if and/or how much she had been able to heal.

Another bush has several clumps of dirty blonde fur in it. One of the twins; even Yasmin isn’t sure which one. From the dent in the ground next to it, the encounter didn’t end well for whichever one it was. There are also several patches of a black, oily substance. Stiles kneels down next to it, reaches out, but then changes his mind. “Someone come check this out for me, and I expect a gold star for not, you know, sticking my finger in it and then licking it.”

“God, you’re such a toddler,” Derek says, crouching down next to him. He smells it, and makes a face. “Definitely where that bitter smell is coming from. Blood or venom, I guess.” He picks up a handful of the snow it’s lying in, which will dilute it somewhat, and rubs it between his fingers. Nothing happens. “Well, it doesn’t work by touch, whatever it is, and I’m _not_ tasting it.”

“Geez, Derek,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes dramatically. “It’s not like I was going to _ask_ you to – ”

“It’s the very next thing you were going to ask me, and don’t even try to convince anyone otherwise,” Derek retorts.

Stiles sticks his hands in his pockets and whistles innocently.

The others shake their heads at him. Allison takes some pictures and then bottles up some of the substance for further analysis. “What now?”

Stiles chews on his lower lip for a minute. “Let’s split into pairs,” he finally says. They don’t have enough to cover the four cardinal directions, but they can cover more ground in pairs than they can in one group. “I’ll go with Yasmin. Derek, go with Erica . . . if you’re okay with that?” he modifies, and Derek gives a grudging nod. He knows that Yasmin won’t let anything happen to Stiles; with her mate on the line, she’ll be more vicious than any of them. “Scott, with Allison. Damn, I don’t suppose . . .” He takes out his phone, then shakes his head. “No signal. We’ll be on our own. Howl if you need anything.”

There’s a round of nods, although Derek looks a little sour, and then they each indicate a direction. “Something bothers me,” Allison says suddenly. “This thing was obviously big. But it doesn’t seem to have left any trail coming or going. It’s like it appeared here and then disappeared here.”

“One of many mysteries we have yet to solve,” Stiles says with a nod. “Be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. Unless it looks urgent, just make a note, take a picture, note the GPS coordinates.” He checks his watch. “We’ll meet back here in two hours. Then we’ll go find some food.”

Everyone agrees. Stiles tucks his phone away, and he and Yasmin start walking. The sun is higher now, and he unbuttons his coat.

“Thanks,” Yasmin says. Stiles glances at her, and she says, “I just realized I didn’t say that yesterday.”

Stiles shakes his head a little and says, “Justin was _way_ nicer to me than I deserved during my trial. Helping me figure things out with Derek and everything. This is my chance to pay that back. But I would’ve anyway. See, that’s the thing with this whole alliance thing. Sometimes you just have to . . . be _good_. Because it encourages others to do the same. I’ll happily risk my life to help you and Justin if it means that months from now, someone else will do that for me. It has to start somewhere, you know?”

Yasmin nods. They walk in silence for several minutes.

Of course, Stiles isn’t very good at silence. “How did you become an alpha, anyway?” he asks curiously. “I mean, I know that all of you are pretty hardcore, but I guess I have a hard time picturing you and Mei that way,” he adds. Yasmin glances at him, and he realizes that this question could be considered, at the least, insensitive. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry, it’s probably really rude of me to ask. It’s not like I’d want to talk about it if someone asked me.”

At this, Yasmin gives a little laugh. “Yeah,” she says. “Maybe a little. Though you’d be surprised – Mei and Ravinder both inherited their positions through their families.”

“I thought Mei wasn’t a born wolf?”

“She’s not. She’s from a turned family.” Yasmin sees Stiles blinking at her and says, “Two turned wolves who have kids together only have about a twenty-five percent chance of passing the lycanthropy down onto their offspring. So a turned wolf family is when people turn their children when they’re too young to know differently.”

“Hang on, I gotta write this shit down,” Stiles says, fumbling for his phone. Yasmin just gives him another amused look. “Justin had told me that Mei was turned so young she didn’t know the difference. But they still inherit the alpha through the familial line?”

“Under normal circumstances, no,” Yasmin says. “Mei’s was willed to her by her mother, who didn’t want the wolf who killed her to become the alpha of her family.” She gives a little shrug. “Like Trevor’s alpha passed it down to him willingly.”

Stiles nods. “Okay, I got it,” he says.

“There’s actually a _big_ lycanthropy culture in China,” Yasmin says. “Mei was too young to assume control of her actual family – she was only thirteen – and they considered it a huge honor that she was chosen for the alpha pack.”

“Holy shit, you mean Mei’s been in the alpha pack since she was thirteen?” Stiles asks, and Yasmin nods. “Wow. That’s kinda fucked up.”

Yasmin smiles, showing teeth. “She’s been in longer than anyone except Ravinder. And he’s only been in the pack a few years longer than her. But he was much older, of course. He did get his alpha status through the familial line. There are huge pack and clan wars in India. As far as I know, Ravinder was happy enough to say goodbye to all of that.” Her fists clench at her sides. “God, I hope they’re okay,” she chokes out.

Stiles wants to distract her without pushing for too much personal detail. He knows the story of how Justin became an alpha, so he says, “How about the twins?”

“Funny story, actually,” Yasmin says. “Damn near got them killed. Ethan became an alpha first. They had their own pack. Aiden was his lupa. When another pack came and challenged them for their territory, Ethan kicked the shit out of their alpha and then held him down so Aiden could kill him and be an alpha, too.”

“Wow,” Stiles says. “How did that nearly kill them?”

“Well, the pack went back to evaluate Aiden – and they had only just evaluated Ethan a year or so prior. This was before my time. Apparently they had a really hard time convincing Trevor that they hadn’t gone _looking_ for an alpha for Aiden to kill. Sometimes I think Ravinder still disapproves of them. Kali loved it, of course.” She gives a little shrug. “They were her little protégés. It’s a good thing she kicked the bucket when she did. Justin’s slapped them into shape. They aren’t my favorite people in the world, but hell, after Kali they’re a cakewalk.”

“Why did they join the alpha pack?”

“’Cause they wanted to,” Yasmin says. She sees Stiles’ startled look and says, “Yep. They preferred the power and status over having their own pack.”

Stiles nods. “What about you, then? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“Not much to tell about the early years,” Yasmin says. “I grew up on the streets of Argentina. I was a pretty mean pickpocket by the time I was eight. Then when I was nineteen, I got the Bite, and everything changed.”

“So how’d you become an alpha?” Stiles asks.

“It was self-defense,” she says, “and he wasn’t my alpha.”

Stiles recognizes that this is all he’s going to hear about Yasmin’s story, at least today. He changes the subject, to avoid an awkward silence. “I don’t think I could do what the twins did. Travelling around all the time sounds really awesome, but there’s no way I could give up my pack.”

“Yeah,” Yasmin says, and then stops walking. “Ravinder.”

“What about him?” Stiles asks.

“I can smell him. Fresh. Today.” She tilts her head back and howls, a pure wolf sound that couldn’t possibly have come from a woman’s throat. Then she takes off running.

“Damn it, Yas – ” Stiles hastens after her, stumbling over the rough terrain. He hears an answering howl from somewhere up ahead of them. Under normal circumstances, he doesn’t think he could keep up with Yasmin, but her injuries and fatigue slow her down. He catches up with her just as he starts smelling smoke. Chimney smoke, he thinks, although it’s not like he’s a connoisseur.

A little cabin comes into view, smoke curling up from the back. It’s surrounded by a post fence which Yasmin jumps over without pause. Ravinder is coming out the front door of the house, and throws his arms around Yasmin as she enters the yard. “I’m so glad to see you,” he says, burying his face in the crook of her neck. Yasmin just manages a sob of agreement. Then Ravinder pulls away. His gaze lands on Stiles and he tilts his head to one side, regarding him curiously. “I feel as though I should be surprised to see you,” he says thoughtfully, “and yet somehow, I am not.”

“Namaste to you, too,” Stiles says, amused.

Ravinder gives his customary half-bow. “What are you doing here?”

“Yasmin told me the rest of you guys were missing,” Stiles says, taking a closer look at the older man. He doesn’t look much better than Yasmin, now that Stiles is thinking about it. There’s a deep scratch on one of his cheeks, and the eye on the same side is blackened and bruised. He’s moving gingerly, and can’t hide the wince when Yasmin gives him a squeeze before letting go entirely. The way he’s standing is off, too, like he’s not resting much weight on one leg. So it isn’t just Yasmin who isn’t healing. “She came to get some help.”

“I see,” Ravinder says. Then his eyes go somewhat wide. “Your pack – the medic. Is he with you?”

“They’ll be coming along any minute,” Stiles says. “We split into pairs, but I – ”

Before he can finish his sentence, Ravinder has him by the wrist and is towing him into the house. It’s a completely uncharacteristic move for the quiet, passive wolf. Stiles trips over the door jam and nearly falls. The inside of the house is neat, but a little dusty. It hasn’t been lived in for a while. He’s wondering exactly what’s going on when Ravinder drags him into a bedroom. Mei is lying there, clearly unconscious, sweat beading on her forehead, skin several shades paler than usual. There’s some fabric pressed against her stomach, stained with blood and more of that black, oily substance.

“Jesus,” Stiles says, approaching her. She gives a weak moan as he lifts up the makeshift bandages to see several ugly puncture wounds beneath them.

Ravinder spreads his hands helplessly. “I have been a wolf since the day I was born. All my family, the same. This – this kind of medicine, of healing, I know nothing of it. I have done the best I can, but I – I don’t think it has been enough.”

Stiles lets out a breath. “They look poisoned.”

“The venom from that creature,” Ravinder says. “It had a stinger. She suffered several wounds before I managed to break it away from her. Then I took her and ran. I thought only to get her somewhere safe. By the time I got back to the battlefield, everyone else was gone.”

“Details later,” Stiles says. He can hear and sense the others approaching. “Whose house is this?”

“I’ve no idea. I found it while looking for shelter and broke in. I thought to find a place for Mei to rest, and figured I would explain the circumstances as best I could when the owners returned – but thus far, they have not.”

“Must be a summer vacation home,” Stiles says. “Lucky break, that.” He glances over his shoulder. “Scott and the others are coming.”

He goes back out to the front so his pack will be able to see that he’s whole and unharmed. They insist on very surreptitious marking and checking him over anyway. He allows this with good grace, then gestures to Scott. “Mei is hurt bad,” he says. “Ravinder doesn’t look too great either, but I doubt he’ll be interested in bandages until after you’ve seen Mei.”

Scott nods and follows him into the house. He makes a surprised noise when he sees how bad Mei looks, and takes his first aid kit out of his backpack. Ravinder paces anxiously while he looks her over. “Well,” he says a minute later, “the good news is that the wounds are pretty superficial. None of them went deep enough to get through the abdominal wall, so her major organs are fine.”

“And the bad news?” Stiles prompts.

“Aside from the venom, which there isn’t much I can do about until we figure out what creature this was, they’re infected.” Scott gestures to the red streaks around the wounds, the puffiness of them. “She’s got a high fever.”

“Is she going to die?” Ravinder asks quietly.

“Well, not if I can help it,” Scott says, “but I can’t treat her with what I have. She needs medicine. Antibiotics and painkillers. Stuff you can’t just walk into any pharmacy and buy, not even with a prescription.”

Stiles considers this, rubbing a hand over the back of his head. “Bringing her to a hospital sounds problematic, when something may be after them, and if the magic wears off and she starts healing, it could lead to a lot of awkward questions. Can you swipe what we’ll need?”

“It won’t be easy, but yeah, I think I can do that,” Scott says. “Let me at least get some IV fluids started. That’ll help.”

Mei flinches and then _howls_ when he starts trying to get the IV in. Ravinder is immediately by her side, kneeling beside the bed and smoothing down her hair, talking quietly to her in a language that Stiles doesn’t know. She quiets a little, but they still need to hold her down while Scott gets the IV started. “If you can get her to take these, that’ll help,” he says, shaking some painkillers out of his kit. “But don’t force the issue. We don’t want her to choke.”

Ravinder nods. “Yes. All right.”

Stiles checks his phone and is delighted to see that he has cell service. He wonders if there are other cabins around here, or if whoever owns the place is so rich that they paid to have a tower put in. He sees that he has an e-mail from his father, and pulls it up. “Yes!”

“What is it?” several people ask.

“Hunch paid off,” Stiles says. “I asked my dad if he could call around to the local hospitals and see if anyone matching any of the alpha pack’s descriptions had wound up in the emergency room and/or the morgue. Relax, it’s not the morgue,” he says, seeing Yasmin and Ravinder stiffen. “It’s one of the twins. Not sure which one, wasn’t carrying ID, but Hood River Memorial has a patient with a concussion and broken ribs there that was found bleeding on the side of the road. We need to go to the hospital anyway, so . . .”

“You wanna break him out?” Scott asks skeptically. “That’s easier said than done . . .”

“He should be able to check himself out AMA, right?” Stiles asks.

“I’ll go with you,” Yasmin says immediately. “He won’t go with you. I mean, he doesn’t really _know_ you, and he doesn’t have any reason to trust you.”

Stiles nods and turns to Scott. “Can you handle that?”

“You got it,” Scott says. “Erica, you want to come along and give me a hand?”

“You bet, stud,” she says.

“Allison?” he asks.

“I want Allison here with me,” Stiles says. “This is officially our home base, until such time as the owners show up, something I don’t anticipate happening any time soon. We’re going to set up a perimeter and a watch, and I’ll need her.”

Allison nods briskly, then leans over to give Scott a generous kiss. “Be careful.”

“Of course.” He returns the kiss, then turns to Ravinder. “Just try to keep her comfortable. We’ll be back before you know it.”

Ravinder lets out a shuddery breath. “She is like a sister to me. I – I cannot – ”

“Dude,” Scott says, “this is what I do. It’s cool.” He turns and heads out the door.

“Don’t worry,” Stiles says, absently thumbing at his phone. “If he’s not comfortable with you owing him a debt, you can pay it back to me.”

Ravinder lets out a snort. “Of course,” he says.

Stiles is already dialing. “Hey,” he says, when Lydia picks up. “We’ve found Ravinder and Mei, they’re hurt but okay. We’ve settled down at a home base. I’m texting you our GPS. I think you should be able to drive up to this cabin we found to squat in. What’s your ETA?”

“We left first thing,” Lydia says, “so we should be there around dinner time. Want us to pick anything up?”

“Yeah, that’d be good, there isn’t much here,” Stiles says. “How’d it go back at home?”

“Well, Danny’s parents threw an absolute _fit_ ; it took both your dad, Ms. McCall, and Allison’s dad to get them calmed down. He was completely right about what they would be upset about, i. e. that he was in danger and had been hurt, and they didn’t really like his answer of ‘but now I’m a werewolf so I’m a lot tougher and won’t be hurt again’. Boyd’s parents were strangely accepting. I don’t think it’s sunk in yet. They decided to leave his sibs in the dark for now. Can’t trust them to keep quiet about it. Mac and I went with ‘winter spa’ so no problems there. Uhm. Have you talked to Erica’s dad?”

“No. Why?”

“Because we thought maybe he could help with Danny’s parents but he, uhm, didn’t realize Erica had left town?” Lydia winces. She’s obviously not pleased to be a tale-bearer. “So you may want to have a little chat with Erica about what exactly you mean by ‘don’t antagonize your father’.”

“Son of a bitch,” Stiles says. He sighs. “I should know better than to trust her with stuff like this. Okay. I’ve gotta go. Drive safe.”

“See you soon,” she replies, and hangs up.

Stiles shakes his head a little. “Okay,” he says. “Allison, Derek, you’re with me. Ravinder, I know I can’t give you orders, but I think you should stay inside and stay off that leg until Scott has had a chance to look at it. Okay?”

Ravinder nods wearily. “Yes,” he says. “Believe it or not, I will be happy to do so.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Scott quickly ascertains that stealing things from Hood River Memorial Hospital is going to be a little more difficult than stealing them from Beacon Hills would be. It’s a much smaller place. Although that will make finding things easier, it also ups the chances that they’ll be noticed as not belonging. They take a quick run through the public parts of the hospital to see where color and brand of scrubs the aides are wearing. Then it’s just a quick stop by the local Wal-Mart to buy ones that match.

“Starting at the hospital, hm?” the cashier chirps at him, as he lays down the stack of clothes. He nods and smiles at her. Then they head back to the hospital.

Yasmin does her part well. She rushes up to the front desk and says, “Is he here? My fiancée? I’ve been looking for him everywhere and then I saw in the paper that someone had found a body by the side of the road, he’d gone out jogging and I – ”

“Calm down, sweetie,” the older woman manning the desk says kindly. “What’s his name?”

“Aiden, it’s Aiden Stockton, but he wasn’t carrying his wallet, I don’t know if his name would be on his chart,” Yasmin has worked herself into a frenzy that’s not entirely feigned. Scott and Erica wait quietly behind her.

“Oh, yes, the young man they found two days ago,” the woman says, nodding. “I’m so glad you’re here. We hadn’t been able to identify him. He’s in the ICU, still,” she adds, and gives them directions. The three of them head down the hallway.

“Immediate family only,” they’re told, of course, but Scott is prepared for this. Yasmin explains that she’s his fiancée, and shows off the Claddagh ring that she borrowed from Allison. It’s several sizes too big for her petite hands, but fortunately, the nurse doesn’t notice.

“This is my sister, can she come along too?” Yasmin asks, indicating Erica, and as Scott had hoped, this nice woman in a town full of extremely Caucasian people has no problem believing that if two Hispanic women are together, they must be related. Erica only looks vaguely Hispanic, but apparently it’s enough. In fact, it goes over so easily that Scott somewhat regrets not having posed as a brother. As it is, he changes into his scrubs, waits until nobody’s paying attention, and just slides through the door to the ICU while someone else is leaving.

He catches up with the ladies just as they’re getting to the room where one of the twins is lying. He’s heavily sedated, and Scott flips through his chart. “He’s been combative, that’s why they’ve sedated him,” he says. “And we’re just in time, looks like they were waiting for a bed to free up in the psych ward, and it would be _way_ harder to get him out of there.” He reaches over for the IV and dials it all the way down.

“Probably because he wants to get the holy hell out of here,” Erica says, shifting from foot to foot. “Man, I fuckin’ hate hospitals. No offense,” she adds to Scott.

“None taken,” he says. “I’m not a huge fan of them myself.”

The twin is already coming around as his body races to metabolize what of the sedative is through his system. Scott checks the dose they were giving him. It amuses him to see scrawled notes from the nurses and the pharmacists and doctors about how no, really, they’re _sure_ the dose is correct, that’s what’s required to fully sedate him.

As he wakes, his face starts to change, and Yasmin quickly digs in her bag and drops a shirt over his nose and mouth. That protects her hands from his teeth as she presses them over his mouth before he can make any noise. “Hey,” she says quietly. “Hey, it’s me.”

His eyes go wide for a minute and then the tension floods out of his body. He makes a muffled noise, and she lifts the shirt away. “Aiden,” he whispers, looking around wildly. Scott makes a mental note that the twin they’ve found is Ethan. “Where’s Aiden?”

“We’re not sure,” Yasmin says, and sees the panic in his eyes. “But we’re going to find him, okay? We need to get you out of here.”

After a moment, Ethan nods. “Feel all fuzzy,” he mumbles.

“Yeah, they’ve had you on a lot of drugs,” Scott says, stepping up. Ethan blinks at him in confusion. “Don’t ask, it’s a long story. You’re badly hurt, but not so much that I think you need to be in here. And we need to get back as soon as we can. So, you’re going to have to check yourself out of here. You’ve got a concussion, fractured ribs, and a broken ankle. Here’s what they’re going to say: your condition should be carefully monitored, you’re probably out of the woods but head injuries are tricky, particularly given your earlier disorientation. Here’s what _you’re_ going to say: you appreciate their concern but you don’t have health insurance or a job, and you can’t afford to rack up a huge bill. You understand that you’ll be checking yourself out against medical advice and won’t be able to hold them liable if you get worse or drop dead. Okay? Can you remember all that?”

Ethan nods again. “I have to get out of here,” he says, desperation in his eyes. “I have to find Aiden.”

“Okay. While you guys are doing that, Erica and I have to find some stuff. We’ll meet you back out at the car. Yas? You’ll be okay?”

Yasmin gives a quick nod. “We’ll handle it.”

“Okay,” Scott says again. “Erica, you’re with me. I think the ER is our best bet. Everything would be too closely guarded at the actual pharmacy. So let’s start there.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, let's get the ball rolling...

By the time Stiles has set up perimeter defenses that he considers adequate and texted the relevant information to the others so they won’t accidentally set them off when coming to the cabin, Ravinder has woken from his nap and is clearly ready to climb the walls. Stiles gives him a stiff drink, which obviously has no affect on him, and is thinking about ways to distract him when Scott and the others get back.

Ravinder greets Ethan with relief if no real affection. Scott had given him some painkillers when the ones from the hospital started to wear off, so he’s fairly mellow. He takes Erica and Allison with him to tend to Mei. Her fever had gone up, even with the saline drip, and Stiles had started to worry about it enough that he had filled the bathtub with snow and put her in it. That had brought it down, although Scott wrinkles his nose at the crude methods, delivers a thorough lecture on why Stiles shouldn’t take network television as a how-to guide on medical care, and starts the antibiotics and the painkillers. Erica and Derek have to hold her down while he stitches up the wounds on her abdomen. Once she’s resting comfortably, Ravinder finally allows Scott to tend to his own wounds and give him some painkillers.

“What about the venom?” Derek asks.

Scott gives a helpless shrug. “Until we can identify the sort of creature, there isn’t much I can do about it. I’m hoping that she’ll be able to fight it off on her own. If it was wolf-specific, it probably would have killed her by now.”

Derek gives a little nod. Stiles is about to say something about the possibilities when Lydia and the others show up. They stopped at a Burger King on their way into town and brought enough food for a dozen hungry werewolves. Ravinder doesn’t look thrilled with the food, but he’s hungry so he eats anyway. Ethan and Yasmin have no problems with it.

“Okay,” Stiles says, as they all sit around the cabin’s living room with their dinner, “let’s get started. I presume we can all agree that this wasn’t some random chance, that a monster happened upon you guys in the forest and tried to eat you for dinner. Someone was behind this.”

“Yes,” Ravinder says with a nod, “and I believe I know who.”

Yasmin and Ethan both look at him in surprise. So does Stiles, who then snorts and says, “Admittedly, that’ll make my job easier. Lay it on me.”

“A few months ago, we met a pack that consisted entirely of sorcerers who had been turned,” Ravinder says.

“Shit, them?” Ethan blurts out. “Aw, fuck.”

“This is a big deal?” Stiles says. Now that he’s thinking about it, he’s never met a werewolf who was also a sorcerer. Of course, it’s not like he’s met a lot of werewolves, but still, he’s met several dozen by this point. Deaton had said everyone had the potential to learn sorcery, but he had never offered to teach it to any of the pack besides giving Allison a few rudimentary tricks.

“It’s frowned upon,” Ravinder says. “Primarily because it can create someone so powerful, they would be nigh unstoppable. But the magic can also react unpredictably, especially during the full moon. Sometimes that makes spells more powerful. Other times it makes spells blow up in one’s face.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. “But this guy was doing it anyway.”

Ravinder nods. “How he himself procured the bite and became an alpha, I do not know. However, he had taken a number of sorcerers – mostly young men and women, some still children – and turned them against their will, using brute force and intimidation to keep them in line.”

“Now that was the shortest damned trial I’ve ever seen,” Yasmin says dryly.

“Turning betas against their will isn’t an _automatic_ fail,” Ethan says, “but it sure as hell hurts your chances.”

“So Justin failed this guy,” Stiles says, “and presumably killed him. Right?”

Ravinder nods and pinches the bridge of his nose. “It was . . . particularly ugly. He tried to rally his betas to his defense. There was compulsory magic on them as well as considerable psychological manipulation. Several of them were killed, many of them wounded, before we realized what was happening. At which point we basically had no choice but to endure whatever wounds they inflicted upon us while we concentrated our efforts on the alpha himself. Once he was dead, they stopped fighting.”

“Obviously, they were pretty upset,” Yasmin continues, “but, you know, we felt bad for them. They were all sorts of fucked up. So Justin kind of designated one of them as the stand-in alpha and said they had six months to get their shit together, like all the other probationary cases got, and that we’d come back and check on them.”

“So they didn’t have an actual alpha,” Scott says, and Yasmin nods. “You think they’re coming after you now?”

“Not ‘they’,” Ravinder says. “Some of the pack members were loyal to the alpha – those who were turned voluntarily, who were part of his effort to form a, shall we say, super-pack.”

“We _thought_ we had killed them all,” Ethan says, “but I have a feeling that Rindy is about to tell us that we hadn’t.”

Ravinder sighs. “Two days ago, just after finishing the last trial, Justin got a text from the stand-in alpha, saying that one of the pack members had left and was planning to come after us.”

“What?” Ethan and Yasmin clamor. “Why didn’t he tell us?” Ethan protests.

“Why did he tell _you_ and not the rest of us?” Yasmin adds.

“Justin didn’t want the rest of you worried unnecessarily. We decided to lay low for a few days and think about how to handle it. We have magical protections, of course,” he adds to Stiles, “but as you are aware, I’m sure, there’s only so much help that can provide. They can shield a person from sorcery, but don’t stop sorcery from affecting the world around you.”

“Or stop sorcery from summoning up a completely physical insect-monster and setting it on you,” Stiles says.

“Yeah, we had that problem with a lizard once,” Boyd says, and Danny shudders.

Ravinder blinks at the two of them and then says, “I – forgive me. You have added to your pack, and I was too distracted to even notice.”

“Oh, yeah,” Stiles says. “I didn’t think of introductions. Uh, that’s Boyd and Danny over there,” he says, and both of them say hello, “and that’s Mac. She’s the newest. Only joined this past November.”

Ravinder gives them his customary bow. “Namaste. It is good to meet you.” He looks back to Stiles. “You’ve been gaining in strength. That is good to see. We have heard the rumors about you, of course, but it’s difficult to say how much is truth.” He waves this aside. “I digress. Yes, my assumption is that the sorcery conjured up the monster that attacked us.”

“Well, so far we’ve found you four,” Stiles says, “and that’s not a bad start. If we’re lucky, Justin and Aiden are similarly holed up somewhere.”

“But then why can’t I feel Justin?” Yasmin asks.

“I’m having the same problem,” Ethan says, shifting uncomfortably. “There’s _never_ been a time when I haven’t known where my brother is. Even before we were wolves, it was just . . . always something we could do.”

Stiles chews on his lower lip. “You have a point,” he admits, “and I’ll admit I don’t have an easy answer. But why pick on those two specifically?”

“Maybe he meant to capture all of us, and simply wasn’t able to,” Ravinder offers. “As I said, when Mei was wounded, I left the battle with her. By the time I got back, it was over.”

“Well, the first thing we need to do is figure out what the fuck it was,” Erica says. “Right?”

Allison shakes her head. “If it was a magical construct,” she says, “it could have been anything. It’s a creature purely of this guy’s imagination. Which means he could have given it literally any features that he wanted to. It would have taken a lot of power to make something so big, yeah, but totally possible. And that explains why there was no entrance or exit path. It literally only existed for the moment of battle.”

“After which our guy would have just loaded Justin and Aiden up into his car or dog sled or whatever and taken off with them,” Stiles says. He rubs both hands over his hair. “And none of us found any path out of there, which means he probably used magic to erase it. I keep saying he. Is it a he?”

“Yes,” Ravinder says. “Gabriel.”

Stiles sits up. “You know his name?” he asks. “Well, shit, why didn’t you _start_ with that?”

Ravinder frowns. “I fail to see what it gains us. I doubt he will come if we go out into the forest and shout his name.”

“Oh my _God_ , dude, who do you think you’re talking to?” Stiles asks. “If I have his _name_ , I can _find_ him. Like I did you guys, when you showed up in Beacon Hills. Remember?”

“I suppose you did,” Ravinder muses. “Admittedly, it never occurred to me to ask how you had done that.”

“I don’t even remember anymore,” Stiles says.

“The car rental information,” Erica tells him.

“Oh, that’s right,” Stiles says. “I got the security footage of Derek’s apartment parking lot, got the plate number off your car, got the credit card information from your car rental company, et cetera. Tell me this guy has a super unusual name.”

“I don’t know the last name,” Ravinder says, “but I will call the young woman who took over the pack and ask.” He picks up his cell phone and leafs through the address book for a few moments. He exchanges some words with the person on the other end, then hangs up without giving them any detail. “Gabriel Khan.”

“For real?” Stiles says, perking up. “Aw, shit, this is gonna be awesome, finally I’m gonna have an excuse to shout ‘Khaaaaaaaan!’” Ravinder gives him a blank look. The others, however, are laughing. Stiles just grins and starts tapping at his phone. “Twenty-one people with the name Gabriel Khan in the United States. Sweet. Danny, Mac, you’re up.”

The two computer geeks exchange a look. “I’ll take financials, you take personals?” Danny offers.

“Deal,” Mac says, getting her laptop out.

“I’ll check on Mei while they’re doing that,” Scott says, getting to his feet. Lydia and Allison start cleaning up the remains of dinner. Stiles sends Isaac and Boyd out to do a quick patrol of the woods, make sure that nobody is lurking.

While the others are busy, Stiles pulls Erica aside. “Is there anything you want to tell me about things you may or may not have told your father?” he asks.

Erica makes a pouting face. “Someone tattled on me.”

“Erica,” Stiles says, “what the fuck were you thinking? You can’t just go out of town and not tell your parents.”

“Actually, I’m eighteen, so yeah, I can,” she says, with a hair flip. “And you never told me I had to tell them. You just said ‘go home, talk to your parents, grab some stuff’. That’s what I did.”

Stiles rubs a hand over his face. “Except now he’s just going to be more pissed off every time you need to do pack stuff.”

“Hey,” Erica says, “I’m in this pack. This is my life now. My dad needs to get used to it. Coddling won’t help.”

“Neither will lying to him,” Stiles points out.

Erica makes a face at him. “You know, just because you’re my alpha doesn’t mean you can _always_ tell me what to do. My family, my business.”

“I know,” Stiles says, lifting his hands in surrender. “But I don’t like to see you unhappy. And I have this nagging feeling that if you don’t clear up this stuff with your father, eventually you will be. Just think about it. Okay?”

“Fine,” she says, with an exaggerated sigh, and then she makes up for it with a kiss on the mouth.

Stiles proceeds into the bedroom with Derek on his heels, where Scott is checking Mei’s IV. Ravinder is sitting on the edge of the bed next to her, smoothing down her hair. Stiles studies them both and thinks to himself, ‘like a sister to you, sure’. He wonders who exactly Ravinder thinks he’s fooling, and more important, why he’s trying to fool anyone. “How’s she doing?”

“Temp’s come down about two degrees, so that’s good,” Scott replies. “Mostly what she needs now is rest.”

“The others?” Stiles asks, since they’re alone except for Ravinder, who seems to be the default leader while Justin is gone. Derek sits down at his feet.

“Yas is healing up nice. Ethan’s still in pretty rough shape, I won’t lie there. We’ve got to try to keep him sedentary as much as possible, which won’t be easy while his twin is missing.” He jerks his head towards Ravinder and said, “Genius here has been walking around on a fractured pelvis, so he probably shouldn’t be going much of anywhere either.”

Ravinder doesn’t seem pleased at this assessment, but lets it slide. “I don’t understand what’s interfering with the wolf healing.”

Stiles chews on his lower lip, thinking about this. It’s been bothering him as well. Wounds inflicted by another alpha are slower to heal, but whatever attacked them was no alpha. “Magic can interfere with healing,” he says, “but I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. Scott, you’re giving Mei werewolf doses of those drugs, right?”

Scott nods. “And I saw Ethan's chart in the hospital. It was requiring massive doses to keep him sedated. Once we took him off them, he came ‘round right away. So they’re still metabolizing things like normal wolves.”

“That’s what I thought,” Stiles says. “Ravinder, you wanna be my guinea pig?”

Ravinder looks at him blankly. “I’m not sure what you mean – ”

Stiles reaches into his belt and produces a knife. “Let’s see whether your healing in general is impeded, or if wounds inflicted by this monster specifically are the problem.”

“Ah,” Ravinder says. “Very well.” He holds out his hand.

“Arm,” Stiles says, taking him by the wrist. “Hands are a bad place for wounds.” He presses the blade of the knife against Ravinder’s forearm. Blood trickles down his wrist, but the cut closes mere moments later, just like it should. “Okay. That’s one mystery solved. Or, well, sort of solved.” He frowns thoughtfully as Ravinder wipes the blood off his arm. “I guess it’s possible that if this guy conjured up his dream monster, he could have included ‘inflicts permanent damage to werewolves’ as part of his specifications.”

“Yikes,” Scott says, and Derek chuffs in agreement.

“Or the wounds could be magical in nature somehow,” Stiles says, and rubs his hands over his face. “Let’s have a few words for how much I _don’t_ want to go up against a sorcerer again. Stone might have been a one in a million, but even Jackson did his fair share of harm to us.”

Derek lets out a low whine and leans against Stiles’ knee, clearly not happy remembering how close Stiles had come to death during that misadventure. Stiles rubs his ears absently, thinking this over.

“I cannot ask you to stay,” Ravinder agrees. “Not given what we face. You have helped more than enough.”

Stiles shakes his head. “Yas asked me to help her find Justin,” he says, “and that’s what I’m going to do. This guy was prepared for you – not for me. There will be ways around him. Everybody has weaknesses. We just have to figure them out, that’s all.”

“How did you defeat Stone?” It’s Yasmin who asks, a timid voice from the doorway. “Nobody really knows.”

Stiles lets out a breath. “All I did was reflect one of his spells back onto him. I had a massive advantage in that I had something that had once belonged to him. Something . . . magically, spiritually, phenomenally powerful over him. I used it to channel the spell. That’s all. It’s not something I’ll be able to duplicate here, even if I could still use magic, which I can’t. Mine was stripped.”

“Stripped?” Ravinder asks, startled. “Why on earth - ?”

“For my own reasons,” Stiles says briskly, more because he doesn’t want to waste time explaining it than because he doesn’t want Ravinder to know. “Long story short: no magic. And if this guy is as powerful as you say, our best chance will be a sniper shot.” It occurs to him, sudden and uncomfortable, that they have only Ravinder’s word about what this person has done. He’s not willing to kill on the word of one man, even Ravinder. They’re going to have to do some independent research. “Let’s go see what the others have got.”

The patrol was uneventful, the kitchen is clean. Mac and Danny are conversing quietly as they work on their laptops. Nothing yet, they report. Stiles pulls Allison aside and asks her to call her father and see if he’s heard anything about these sorcerer werewolves. He e-mails Deaton, Gwen, and Rebekah, the witch he works with sometimes, to ask if they’ve heard anything. All of them keep their ear to the gossip train, and he wants confirmation of this.

Derek approaches as he’s tapping at his phone, having shifted back to his human form. “You should get some sleep,” he says. “Danny and Mac will be at this for a while. And I know you didn’t sleep at all last night.”

“Neither did you,” Stiles replies.

“I caught at least four hours in the car,” Derek says, “but I’ll sleep too.”

Stiles sighs and rubs his hands over his face. “Okay,” he says. “Danny, Mac, work as late as you can, but don’t wake me unless you find something you think is time sensitive. Derek and I will take the last watch. The rest of you can divvy them up as you see fit. Danny and Mac are exempt since they’ll be doing the computer work.”

Everyone agrees to this plan, and Stiles wanders into the second bedroom, which has two twin beds on the small side, obviously meant for children. If he and Derek take one, that’ll leave the other for a few of the wolves. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. He surprises himself by curling up with Derek and falling asleep almost immediately.

When he wakes, he’s not sure why. He’s still wearing his watch, so he checks the time. It’s just past three AM. He carefully untangles himself from Derek, who stirs but doesn’t wake, and goes out into the main room. Wolves are clustered there, asleep in a pile. Allison and Lydia are on watch, sitting by the windows at the front. They give him a nod and a questioning glance when they see that he’s awake. “I’m okay,” he says in a low voice, not wanting to wake the others.

He’s gotten some e-mails, and reads them as he leans against the counter in the kitchen, eating leftover French fries. Both Rebekah and Deaton had heard rumors of both the pack of sorcerers and their destruction. Deaton confirms that a sorcerer with enough juice could conjure a monster of this caliber. He also sends the recipe for a remedy that he thinks might help cure the venom.

“Hey,” Stiles says, sitting down next to Allison. “Have we got these things in the emergency kit?” he asks, showing her the list.

She skims it quickly. “Most of it, yeah. I can’t vouch for the quantities, but . . .” She gets up from her seat and starts rummaging through her things. After Mikael’s herbal remedy had helped the burns he had sustained during the Conclave so efficiently, he had taken to looking into that sort of treatment for injuries. He and Allison had put together a sort of emergency kit to bring with them, since hospitals were often a bad idea.

“Thanks,” he says, and starts measuring things into a cup he finds in the kitchen. “Heard from your dad?”

“Yeah,” Allison says. “And he had heard about it. In fact, it was kind of a big deal. This past summer. There had been some hunters sent to handle it, but Justin and the pack got there first. What was left of the pack went underground, and the hunters looked for them but couldn’t find them. Which would make sense. I mean . . . they’re sorcerers. I’m sure they can hide when they want to.”

“Okay.” Stiles lets out a breath. “So we’ve got some independent confirmation now. We just need to find this asshole.”

“I think Danny and Mac made some progress,” Allison says, “but we can’t just storm the castle. This guy is a powerful sorcerer. After you went to bed, I talked to Ravinder about it. He gave me the contact information for Clara – the stand-in alpha of the sorcerer’s pack. We’ve been texting about what kind of magic this guy does. She says he’s heavily reliant on symbols and frameworks to do anything powerful. Which means if we can get him out of his lair, we’ll have a big advantage over him. He can’t just fling magic around on the fly, the way Stone and even Jackson could.”

Stiles nods. “Okay. Good.” He knows from his own reading that every sorcerer is different, and that the way someone does magic is dependent on how they learned to do it in the first place. Magic is so much about belief that it’s quite easy for a sorcerer to use physical objects or verbal spells as a crutch, even when another sorcerer would find them unnecessary. He grinds up some herbs and adds them to the mixture. He squints at the last line. “Are you – hair from a virgin, seriously?”

“Purity,” Allison says, with a shrug. “A lot of spells designed to negate venom use virginal stuff. Just be glad that it’s not asking for, well, fluids. I’ve seen ones that do.”

Stiles gags, then looks over at the pile of wolves speculatively. “Think we can get a hair off Isaac without him waking up?”

“Seriously?” she asks, an amused smile quirking at the corner of her lips.

“Well, I don’t want to embarrass him – ”

“And plucking hairs off him while he’s asleep is your solution?” Allison shakes her head at him and walks over to the pile of wolves. She puts a hand on Isaac’s paw and gives it a gentle shake. His eyes open a moment later and he blinks at her sleepily. “Need a hair of yours for a potion we’re making to help Mei,” she says, and he yawns prodigiously and then closes his eyes. Allison returns a moment later with several strands of hair in her hand. “Now was that so hard?”

Stiles makes a face at her, and she giggles. “Someday that kid is going to get laid, and then what are we going to do?” he asks.

“Throw him a party,” she says, putting the hair in the glass. There’s a little puff of smoke and the liquid changes from a muddy brown to a crystal clear. “Nice,” she says.

“You know, when Deaton said this was an ‘herbal remedy’, I think he was misusing some terminology,” Stiles says, and shrugs. He sees Allison yawn. “How much longer is your shift?”

She checks her watch. “Twelve minutes. Then Boyd and Erica take over.”

“Okay.” He bumps shoulders with her. “I’ll give this to Mei and then go back to bed, see if I can fall back to sleep.”

“Okay.” Allison waves as he heads into the master bedroom. All of the alpha pack members that have gathered there are asleep. Yasmin is still in her human form, since her arm is splinted, and she’s laid down next to Mei. Ravinder and Ethan are in wolf form, sprawled across the end of the bed. Stiles checks the e-mail from Deaton another time to make sure that this potion is for drinking, not any other sort of application, and then reaches out to Mei.

Her eyes flutter open as he touches her cheek, but they’re glassy, unfocused. “Here, drink this,” Stiles says gently, tilting her head back and pressing the cup to her mouth. She drinks without questioning. When the glass is empty, her eyes close again. Stiles licks out the residue curiously. It tastes overly sweet and a little sticky, nothing like the herbs it came from. Then he startles guiltily and glances around to make sure nobody saw, before hastily leaving the room and crawling back into bed with Derek. He doubts he’ll fall back to sleep, but he doesn’t want Derek to notice his absence and get restless, as he’s wont to do.

Everything is still quiet at five AM, when Erica comes and wakes him. Derek is easily roused out of bed. Stiles checks all his traps and surveillance and finds nothing out of the ordinary. He waits until six before he starts making breakfast. Lydia, who knows him so well, brought groceries as well as the fast food for dinner.

The smell of sausage and pancakes gets everyone else in his pack up. Leaving Boyd to tend the food, he goes to check on the alphas, with Scott behind him. He’s already given Scott a quick rundown of the ‘herbal remedy’ Deaton had him administer.

“She looks a _lot_ better,” Scott says. He keeps his voice low to avoid waking the others, but Ethan stirs anyway, then wakes with a jolt.

“Where’s Aiden?” he demands, still half-conscious, and that wakes the others. It takes a few minutes to get him calmed down and everyone sorted out.

“Ooooooh,” Mei groans, trying to sit up, one hand pressed to her abdomen.

“Easy, easy,” Scott says, putting one hand on her shoulder and pushing her back into the bed. “Don’t try to move too much.”

“What . . .” Mei frowns at him in confusion. Then Ravinder is grasping her other hand, and she blinks over at him. “What happened?”

“It will take some time to explain,” Ravinder says, his eyes bright with unshed tears. “What is important is that you are well now. Be easy.”

Mei sinks back into the pillows, allowing Scott to push up her shirt and examine the wounds. The red inflammation has gone down a great deal. “Your temperature’s normal,” Scott says. “I think we’ll want to leave you on the antibiotics a couple more days just to be on the safe side, but you should be okay.”

Mei’s gaze darts to Ravinder, and he nods at her. So she turns to Scott and says, “Thank you.” Her voice is raspy. “I’m a little thirsty.”

“I’ll get you something,” Yasmin says. Stiles follows her, since it’s obvious that his presence isn’t needed, and Mei’s reunion with the pack, such as it is, is likely to be emotional. She goes into the kitchen and starts filling a glass with water. Her hands are trembling a little, so Stiles asks her if she’s all right. She turns and presses her face into his shoulder. “Thank you,” she says fiercely. “ _Thank you_.”

He gives her a hug, letting her rest against him for a minute. “Hey, mi pack es su pack,” he says.

She swallows hard and pulls away. “I heard what Ravinder said to you last night,” she says. “You should go. You’ve done enough. I don’t want your pack in danger.”

Stiles hesitates. The urge to cut and run _is_ tempting, but he knows that it would only be asking for trouble. “Yas, this is about more than you and Justin now. This guy can’t just do whatever he wants. And right now would be a bad time for the alpha pack to run into trouble, given the way Justin’s been changing things around. We’re trying to change the _world_ here – make it a safer place for everybody. And I’m wiling to risk my life for that. Besides, Justin is my friend. So we’re in this together.”

Yasmin takes a deep breath, nods, and gets in control of herself. “Okay. Yes.”

“I’m going to talk to Danny and Mac. You go see to Mei and the others.”

“Okay.” Yasmin turns and heads back into the bedroom.

Stiles plops down on the sofa in the living room, where Danny and Mac are both typing away. “Okay, guys. Hit me.”

“We’re good,” Danny says. He looks a little tired, but not too bad. “Took a little work to weed him out from the others, but Allison was chatting with that Clara woman and we found out where the pack had been living prior to everything else – you don’t actually give a shit about my methods, do you.”

“If you say you’ve got the right guy, I trust you,” Stiles says. “Although I’m quite interested in learning your methods. Maybe some other time. I want to get going while there’s plenty of daylight. Sorcerers tend to be nocturnal.”

Danny slaps the laptop shut. “Motel 6 in The Dalles.”

“What the hell is The Dalles?” Stiles asks.

“It’s a city. Well, a town,” Mac says. “About twenty miles east of Hood River.”

“What a weird name for a town,” Stiles says.

“You’re one to talk about weird names,” Danny says, with a snort of laughter. Stiles has to admit that he has a point. “Anyway, from the credit card charge, he either paid for multiple rooms or a long-ass stay. It’s just over fifteen hundred bucks. Looking at their website, that motel runs about sixty-five bucks a night. So either it’s one room for about three weeks, or five rooms for four nights. Or somewhere in that neighborhood.”

“So Justin and Aiden might be there, too,” Stiles says, getting excited. “Okay. Let’s load everyone up. How far away are we from The Dalles?”

“Including the time it will take us to get out of the middle of nowhere and onto an actual road, I’d say about forty-five minutes to an hour,” Mac says.

“Awesome,” Stiles says. “Okay, folks, it’s gatherin’ time,” he calls out, and the others head into the living room. After a moment, the alphas emerge from the bedroom. Ravinder is carrying Mei, and Stiles shoos the others off the sofa so they can lie down. “So our friend is holed up in a motel and it is our hope that he’s got Justin and Aiden there with him,” Stiles explains. “We are going to go open a can of Stilinski-flavored whoop-ass on him.”

“We need to get him out of his room and therefore in a vulnerable position,” Allison says.

“Yeah, but I don’t want to snipe him,” Stiles says. “If Justin and Aiden _aren’t_ there, we may have to try to get information out of him.” Not that he knows how he’ll do that. Torture isn’t exactly in his playbook, and he’s guessing this guy won’t accept any bargains he offers. But he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

“Mountain ash?” Lydia suggests.

Stiles gives a nod. “The real advantage here is that he doesn’t know about us. The alpha pack he might be expecting, but he has no idea we’re here. Allison, you and I are taking point on this. He’d smell any of the wolves. Sorry, guys,” he adds, as the rest of the pack bristles. “You can cover us from a distance. Allison, got your taser?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” she says.

“A taser won’t keep him down for long,” Ethan says, frowning.

Stiles lets out a breath. “There is a very specific frequency of electricity that, for some reason, wreaks havoc on a werewolf’s central nervous system. It’s something that I learned at the conclave. No, it won’t keep him down long, but ten seconds will be enough to get him in a mountain ash circle, and that’s good enough for me. Then we can ascertain if Justin and Aiden are at the hotel, and move from there. Did you guys get his car information?” he adds to Danny and Mac.

Mac nods. “Yeah, it’s a rental. Silver CR-V.”

“Good. That’s where we’ll wait for him. My guess is that when the hotel is evacuated, he’s going to want to beat feet.”

“And why is the hotel going to be evacuated?” Derek asks, quirking an eyebrow at Stiles.

“’Cause we’re gonna pull the fire alarm, duh,” Stiles says.

“That doesn’t guarantee he’ll come out.” Derek is quiet for a moment. “We should smoke him out.”

“Are you okay with that?” Stiles asks, giving him a close look.

“I’ll manage.”

Scott clears his throat. “Stiles, your dad will _freak_ if you set fire to a motel. I mean, for real, he will pitch a fit.”

“Let us handle that, then,” Ethan says. “We can do that.”

Stiles considers, then nods. “Okay. Ravinder, I think you should stay here with Mei.” He thinks that Ethan and Yasmin should stay behind, too, because of their injuries, but he knows that he won’t be able to convince them, not while their lupas are missing. He wouldn’t be convinced either. And he has no authority over them, so it’s better to simply include them in his plans. “We’ll leave the arson up to Ethan and Yasmin. Allison and I on point, but Derek, Isaac, Erica, I want you close. The smoke should help cover up your scent. The rest of you are going to ring the hotel in case he tries to slip past us. But don’t try to stop him. This guy is dangerous. Just trail him and the rest of us will catch up. Any questions?”

Nobody has any.

“Then let’s get this party started.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooooo, someone asked if I had any pics of what my alpha pack looked like (since I wrote ‘The One You Feed’ before the actual alpha pack had been introduced and I invented a bunch of original characters). The answer was yes, although somewhat vague, so then I spent half an hour on the IMDB and Google Image Search and decided to post the results… check them out [on my tumblr](http://gingersnapwolves.tumblr.com/post/75944579835/sooooooo-someone-over-on-ao3-asked-if-i-had-any) if you're interested! <3

 

Stiles is relieved to see that the Motel 6 is set up almost perfectly for the plan he has in mind, and at the beginning, everything goes smoothly. It’s just one long rectangle, two stories, with doors on either side. Half of it faces the road and the other half is bordered by forest. It’s easy enough to tell whereabouts their target’s room is by where he’s parked. Stiles and Allison are able to lurk near his car but stay out of sight thanks to a large black pick-up truck that’s parked two spaces over.

The side he’s parked on is the side by the road, which makes things even easier, since it’s unlikely anyone will flee _towards_ the fire, and the forest is where Yasmin and Ethan go to get things started. It’s mid-morning now, about nine thirty. Stiles is tense and anxious with excitement; Allison is her usual cool, professional self.

On the way to the motel, they stopped and purchased a few gallons of gas. The weather is cold but dry, and there isn’t much snow on the ground. The wind will blow the fire towards the hotel, so that’s in their favor. It’ll also blow the smoke over the parking lot where they’re waiting, which will keep their target from smelling the wolves.

All in all, he couldn’t ask for more favorable circumstances.

Which is why, of course, nothing goes as planned.

It’s not that it goes badly. It simply doesn’t go at all. Within five minutes of their arrival, Yasmin and Ethan have started a sizable blaze, and people are pouring out of the hotel. There are alarms and sirens. Allison and Stiles stay crouched by the silver CR-V and wait. And wait. And wait. Fire trucks arrive. The parking lot starts to empty as guests beat feet. They lose the truck they were using for cover, and have to retreat.

Half an hour goes by, the blaze is put out, the hotel allows people back in. And their target never made a single appearance.

“Fuck,” Stiles says, glowering. “Why didn’t he come out?”

Allison gives her head a little shake. “Maybe he’s not here.”

“Why wouldn’t he be here? His car’s here,” Stiles points out.

“I don’t know,” Allison says, “but I saw the hotel staff going from room to room to make sure everybody had evacuated. If he was there – or if Justin and Aiden were there – they would have made them come out. Ravinder gave us a pretty decent description. I think he just wasn’t here.”

Stiles glowers for a few minutes, trying to work around this. Derek walks over, seeing that they’ve given up on staying hidden. Stiles takes out his phone and dials the motel. A frazzled sounding receptionist picks up. “Can you connect me to Gabriel Khan’s room?” he asks.

“One moment,” she says. There’s a click. Then the phone starts to ring. Nobody picks up.

“Derek,” Stiles says. He nods and jogs over to the line of doors. He starts walking up and down slowly, listening for the sound of the phone. When there are no results on the first floor, he climbs the stairs to the second. With no voice mail, the phone continues to ring.

“This one,” he finally calls down to Stiles.

Stiles hangs up and tucks his phone away. “The secretary didn’t have to ask me what room, so he doesn’t have multiple rooms,” he says to Allison as he jogs over to where Derek is waiting. “Justin and Aiden were never here.”

“Decoy?” Allison asks.

“That’s the unavoidable conclusion, yeah,” Stiles says. “He knew that they might track his real identity, so he got a room and a car and left it parked here. We don’t know that he’s ever even _been_ here.” He trots over to Derek. “Can you see inside?”

Derek shakes his head. “Curtains are drawn.”

Stiles exhales heavily and considers their options. In Beacon Hills, his father could have gotten the clerk to let him in, or make him a key, but they’re not in Beacon Hills. And he doesn’t want to waste time being subtle. “Okay. Break it.”

Derek nods, gives a quick glance around, and then sets his shoulder against the door. One good shove has it caving inward. Stiles lets Derek and Allison go in first. Allison’s little crossbow is at the ready, as she tries to be relatively inconspicuous. But the room is empty. As he expected, it doesn’t look as if it’s been lived in at all. The bed hasn’t been turned down, the cups are still wrapped in plastic. There’s no luggage anywhere, no clothes or toiletries.

In fact, the only thing in the room that obviously wasn’t put their by hotel staff is a balloon. It’s a mylar ‘congratulations’ balloon, the kind that someone could buy for a graduation. It’s sitting right in the center of the single bed, bobbing there, taunting them.

“Oh, it is _on_ now, you piece of shit,” Stiles says. “Kidnap alphas, summon monsters, okay, we’re cool, but you do _not_ mock my detective skills.”

He turns and jogs out of the room, biting his lip. The others are on his heels. “Laundry room,” he says to Derek.

Derek sniffs and points. “That way.”

Stiles nods and starts down the hallway. A few moments later, he’s standing at the door to the laundry room just as one of the maids is pushing out her cart. “Hey, hey, can I ask you something?” he says.

She gives him a blank, somewhat apologetic look, “I no have very much English,” she says.

“Okay, okay,” Stiles says. He takes in her complexion and her nametag, ‘Maria’. He’s got three years of Spanish under his belt. It’s not great, and Erica or Yasmin could do better, but he should be able to have a simple conversation with a maid. Speaking a little slowly, he asks, “Did you clean room 215 yesterday?”

“Oh, si,” she says, nodding.

“Was there a . . .” Stiles can’t remember the word for ‘balloon’, if he ever even knew it. He makes a round gesture with his hand. “Balloon?”

“Globo, si,” she says, with another nod.

So now he knows the Spanish word for balloon, cool, at least today hasn’t been a total loss. “How long has it been there? How many days?”

Maria rubs her hand over the back of her head, clearly trying to remember. “Tres, cuatro,” she says, and waves her hand in a see-saw gesture to indicate that she doesn’t know exactly.

“Awesome. Thanks. Uh, muchas gracias,” Stiles says, and then heads back towards the parking lot.

“What does it matter?” Derek asks. The others are gathering now, so Stiles waits until they’re all back.

Stiles gives them a quick summary of the situation, then says, “I was just curious if it had been there before the monster attacked the alpha pack or after. Or, for that matter, if it had been there before _we_ showed up. Which it was. But still.” He’s mulling all this over, and he doesn’t like it. Before he had showed up, it hadn’t even occurred to Ravinder and the others to try to look up this guy’s credit cards and find out where he was staying. That was _his_ MO. Not the alpha pack’s. But he can’t see any way that this guy would have known he was coming – or that he would have cared. Stiles is small potatoes compared to the alpha pack.

“So what now?” Scott asks.

“Now I’m going to show this guy that he’s nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is,” Stiles says, and takes out his phone. “Hey, Dad, it’s me. Do me a favor? I need some security cam footage at a motel 6 in a town called ‘The Dalles’. D-A-L-L-E-S. Nah, there’s only one, it’s a tiny place.” There’s a long pause. “Parking lot if possible. I’ll take the lobby if it isn’t. For the past three days. Just e-mail it to me.” Another pause, this one longer. “Oh, for the love of . . . I guess you’re right about that. Okay. Well, call me when you have it and I’ll have Danny talk you through uploading it through our FTP. File transfer protocol, why do you even . . .? Yes, I’m impressed you’ve heard of MegaUpload, but they got shut down. We have our own domain. Because of course we do. Okay. Okay, thanks. No, we’re fine, we’ve tracked down four out of six, we’ll get it done. Yeah. Okay. Laters.”

He closes his phone and rolls his eyes. “His e-mail has a two meg attachment limit,” he says.

Danny lets out a snort. “What does he use, Yahoo?”

“No, asshat, he uses the one provided by the state government,” Stiles says. “Apparently they aren’t thinking about having to illegally send camera footage to a werewolf pack.”

Ethan is looking at him warily. “What good is the camera footage going to do?”

“Look, he didn’t walk here,” Stiles says, gesturing to their isolated surroundings. “He obviously got a hotel room and a rental car under his real name, figuring that we might track him down that way. He drove in the rental, but he didn’t leave in it. So did he have another car? Did a taxi pick him up, or what?”

Ethan grinds his teeth. “I just don’t see how this gets us anywhere.”

Erica grins at him, wolf-sharp. “I said that to Stiles when he was doing this exact same thing to find you guys in the Plaza Inn when you first came to town.”

It looks like Ethan might have a clever retort, but Yasmin slips up beside him and squeezes his hand. “Stiles is good at what he does,” she says. “We should let him use his own methods. This guy wasn’t expecting him, so that’s a good way to stay ahead of him.”

It’s clear that Ethan doesn’t like it, but he subsides sullenly. Danny steps up beside him and offers a sympathetic smile. “We’ll get it done, okay? Trust me.”

Ethan glances at him, then sighs and says, “Yeah, okay.” Stiles sees Derek blinking at the two of them and arches an eyebrow, but Derek just gives his head a tiny shake.

Once they’re back in the Jeep, heading back to their temporary home base, he says, “Sorry. The pheromones just took me off guard.”

“Ethan bats for Danny’s team, huh?” Stiles asks. “Good. Maybe Danny’s stunning good looks will keep him distracted and he’ll stop trying to bite my head off.”

Derek shakes his head a little. “We’ve got to find a better place to stay,” he says. “This cabin is isolated, and that’s good, but it’s too far away from anywhere we’ll need to be.”

“We have no idea where we might need to be next,” Stiles says, with a sigh. “If we get a motel room in The Dalles, we might be moving two hours in the wrong direction. This guy is smart. I just have no idea what he wants. Why kidnap Justin and Aiden? Why not just kill them, if that’s what he was after? It must have been a lot of work to get them out of there. Magical monster-wounds or not, neither of them would go down or stay down easy.”

“Yeah,” Derek says, “but to hear Ravinder tell it, this guy wants revenge pretty badly.”

“True enough,” Stiles says. “Anyway, I like the cabin. It’s nice and defensible.”

“Yeah, but nowhere to run, nowhere to fall back to,” Derek argues.

“We won’t get that anywhere, when there’s a sorcerer in the mix,” Stiles says, one hand fiddling at the protection charm. But the thought nags at him as he drives back. It won’t be quick and easy, that much is clear. Justin and Aiden have well and disappeared, and it’s becoming clear that they aren’t just holed up somewhere, the way Ravinder and Mei were. “I can see him taking Justin,” Stiles says thoughtfully, once they’re all gathered back at the cabin, “but why Aiden?”

“Maybe he just took whoever was available,” Scott suggests.

“I doubt it,” Allison says. “Tactically, if he wanted to do that, he would’ve wound up with the weakest members. Grab them and run. He would’ve wound up with Yasmin and Mei – sorry, you two,” she adds, and they both shrug.

“But they’re the ones who either ran away themselves, or got pulled away by someone else,” Boyd says, “making them unavailable.”

Stiles pinches his lower lip. “There’s something we’re missing,” he says.

“Dude, I get the feeling there are a lot of things we’re missing,” Isaac says.

“True,” Stiles says.

Fortunately for the sake of all their sanity, Sheriff Stilinski calls about fifteen minutes later. He has the footage, and it’s only minimally painful to listen to Danny talking him through uploading it to their domain. “This is going to take forever,” he says, staring at the huge file.

“Parking lot or lobby?” Stiles asks.

“Both,” Danny tells him.

“Good, let’s focus on the parking lot,” Stiles says. “The maid said the balloon had been there for three or four days, so let’s rewind to that point and keep an eye out for the silver CR-V. That’s just before the attack, so he prepared ahead of time. It’s still a good day’s worth of footage to sift through, but . . .”

“Easier than that,” Mac says. “We got his credit card. Let’s see what time it was run at the hotel. Then we can pinpoint it a lot more exactly.”

“Yes, good, excellent,” Stiles says, blowing her a kiss.

Mac laughs and starts typing. “Okay. One . . . wow, one forty-five AM. You weren’t kidding about sorcerers being nocturnal.”

“Warlocks are nocturnal; sorcerers can do magic whenever,” Lydia tells her. To Stiles, she adds, “Depending on how the camera is angled, we might not be able to get a look at his face. The lobby was probably closed at that point. He would’ve had to do night check-in.”

“We’ll see,” Stiles says. Danny’s getting the footage to the right point. He starts at two AM and then starts rewinding. They see the silver CR-V pull in at about one forty. “Right on time,” Stiles says. The parking lot is fairly full, but he parks right where they had seen his car earlier that day. “Probably hasn’t been back since then.”

The night window has its own camera, so they get a decent view of Gabriel Khan checking in at the front desk, handing over his credit card, signing the papers. He looks calm and nonchalant, and not at all tired despite the late hour. Then he goes back out to the parking lot. They see him get the balloon out of the car, and then disappear from view.

“Fuck, now what?” Ethan asks impatiently.

A few minutes of footage pass in silence. Then Khan comes back into the frame just as another SUV pulls up. It’s dark, although it’s difficult to determine the color. He gets into the passenger side, and it drives away.

“So someone picked him up,” Allison says. “He has an accomplice.”

“An accomplice whose plate number we – don’t have.” Stiles frowns at the laptop screen. The license plate is tiny on the screen, and the footage is too grainy to read it. “Fuuuuuuck. Anything we can do about that?”

Danny grimaces. “Uh, maybe? But this image wasn’t particularly high-res to begin with. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Let me, I’m better with graphics,” Mac says. Danny nods, screencaps the image, and sends it over to her. While she’s doing that, he tries the night window camera, to see if it got any clips of the man pulling into or out of the parking lot. The way in reveals nothing, but on the way out, they get a quick glimpse of the man in the driver’s seat. He’s dark-skinned and dark-haired, like Khan himself, but his face is blurry from the motion, the window, and the poor quality of the film.

“Family, maybe,” Stiles says. “We’ll check and see if he has any.”

While Mac works on the license plate, Danny looks up Khan’s personal information. “No family,” he reports.

“This is clear as I can get it,” Mac finally says, somewhat apologetic. They stare at it for a long time and agree that although some things are very clear, like the fact that the first digit is a one, others are harder. There are two that could be Bs or 8s, respectively, and Stiles is pretty sure that the last number is a 5 but Mac thinks it’s a 6.

“Look, I think I can create an algorithm that will produce all the possible choices,” Danny says, “and then we can just cross-reference is with the DMV and see if anyone’s name pops.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. “You . . . get on that.” He rubs a hand over his face. It’s only about noon; they got an early start. He doesn’t just want to sit around. “I want to take a group of people back to the scene of the attack and see if we can find anything else useful. It’s worth a try.”

They quickly agree on this. Yasmin insists on accompanying them, but they’re able to talk Ravinder and Ethan into staying behind with Mei. Mac will stay to help Danny, although programming isn’t really her thing. Stiles decides to leave a couple of the better fighters with them, just in case, so Isaac and Boyd stay with them. Boyd doesn’t _like_ fighting, but he’s certainly proficient at it.

The rest of them troop off into the woods. They start at the scene of the attack and work outwards in a spiral pattern rather than splitting up. They go slow and let Allison go first, since she knows the most about tracking. Her eyes skim the ground in broad sweeping motions. The others range out behind her.

“What are we even looking for?” Erica asks.

“Anything,” Stiles says. He’s starting to become painfully aware of the time crunch. Not only did Mac tell her parents she would only be gone three days, one of which they’ve already used and another of which will be necessary to get back to Beacon Hills, but school starts again in less than a week. He doesn’t think any of them are going to be particularly thrilled with the concept of missing the first day of the new semester. It’s a concept so mundane that it’s almost amusing.

The temperature is just below freezing, and sunset will be early. Stiles isn’t thrilled with the idea of trekking back to the cabin in the dark, but he’s desperate to find something that might help. He also knows that they’re better off trying to fight a sorcerer while it’s daylight, although he supposes it isn’t absolutely necessary. Sebastian Stone’s biggest, most powerful spell had been done at ten o’clock in the morning.

It’s Allison who spots it, of course, when the sun shines through the trees and glints off something. She holds up her hand to tell the others to stop, then paces over a few steps and kneels down. “Yasmin, come take a look at this,” she says, and the dark-haired alpha trots over, then inhales sharply.

“What is it?” Stiles asks.

“It’s a ring,” Allison says.

“It’s Justin’s,” Yasmin says, her voice a little breathy. She reaches down and picks it up. Stiles walks over to see that it’s a ring made of – well, he supposes it can’t be silver, although it looks silver. “Platinum,” she says, guessing his train of thought. “It was Trevor’s. Justin kept it even though it didn’t fit him very well. Trevor had surprisingly skinny fingers. Justin had to wear it on his pinky, and even then it was a tight fit.”

“That’s _great_ ,” Stiles says, which such vehemence that everyone blinks at him, startled. “That means it can’t have fallen off by accident. Justin was being dragged along, but he was still conscious, coherent enough to take this ring off and drop it as a clue. That’s seriously the best news we’ve had since we found Mei and Ravinder.”

Yasmin nods, her face bright with sudden, fierce joy.

“There are some grooves here,” Allison says, kneeling. They follow the trail for a little while. It leads to a dirt road. Snow has come and gone in the intervening few days, and there’s no way to get a good look at the tire tracks. Stiles notes down the GPS coordinates, figuring that he can look the road up later and see where it goes. Then they head back to the cabin.

Stiles checks his phone constantly, and as soon as service comes back, he dials Deaton. “How are things going?” the veterinarian asks him.

“Uh, could be better, but could be a hell of a lot worse,” Stiles says. “You can do magic to locate people if you have a personal belonging of theirs, right? A meaningful one?”

“Usually,” Deaton says, as unwilling to commit to an answer as ever. “But don’t forget you’re tracking down someone who’s being held by a sorcerer. There are ways to block that kind of searching, and he might have employed them.”

“Yeah, but he might not have,” Stiles says. “It’s sure as hell worth a try. Any chance you can get up here?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Deaton says, with a slight sigh.

“What, is there like a Druid Convention in town?” Stiles asks, somewhat annoyed, although he knows he doesn’t have any cause to be.

“Actually,” Deaton says, “it’s my day job. There was a hoarding situation a couple of hours away, and I’ve volunteered my veterinary services. I was actually just about to leave.”

“Oh,” Stiles says. “Okay, just make me feel guilty about wanting your help when you are literally off rescuing kittens,” he says, and Deaton laughs a little.

“There is another option,” the vet says.

“Which is?”

“Jackson could do it.”

“Oh, _hell_ to the no,” Stiles says.

Deaton sighs. “He’s been completely clean over a year now. Really, he’s doing very well. A simple spell like this would be a good reintroduction for him. I wouldn’t even have to take the binding off of him for him to do it – just loosen it a little.”

“As an absolute last resort, I will _consider_ it,” Stiles says, “but I’ve got a couple other leads right now and I’d prefer to exhaust them first.”

“All right,” Deaton says. “He’s coming with me to Madera. So if you need him, just let me know. I can send him to meet you.”

Stiles tries not to think about Jackson helping rescue kittens. The idea makes him ill. “Okey dokey,” he says. “Thanks for the help,” he adds, and hangs up. Yasmin is giving him a look. “Stone’s former apprentice,” he says. “Tried to kill us more than once, came this close to losing himself to dark sorcery completely. Deaton’s got his magic bound so we didn’t have to kill him. He will _not_ be participating in the festivities unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”

Yasmin nods. “Okay,” she says, her hand tightening around Justin’s ring.

She’s tired, they’re all tired, and Stiles is glad to see the cabin come into view and smell the chimney smoke. He comes in to find Boyd putting sandwiches together. Ravinder is helping Mei gingerly walk to the bathroom. She’s clearly still in pain, but looking a lot better. Mac is sitting at the computer, rubbing one hand over her face. “Where’s Danny?” Stiles asks her.

“He took a break. He was getting cross-eyed,” Mac says. Her frown becomes a little worried. “That – that’s okay, right?”

“I’m not a micromanager,” Stiles assures her. Mac fit into the pack so well that sometimes it becomes easy to forget that she’s only been in it for a month and some change. “If Danny needs a break, Danny should take a break. Same with you. Any idea where he’s at?” he adds. He wants to talk to him about Jackson if possible.

“I think he’s in the spare room taking a nap,” Mac says.

“Okay. How’s it coming out here?”

Mac heaves a sigh. “Well, the algorithm got the license plate down to about six hundred possible combinations. Only about four hundred of those are plates actually registered in Oregon or any of the surrounding states.”

“Four hundred,” Stiles says, feeling numb.

“Yes, _but_ ,” Mac says, “Danny wrote _another_ algorithm that cross-referenced with the type of car, since we could see that it was a dark-colored SUV, so unless the plates are stolen, we’ve actually narrowed it down to about fifty. Further presuming that the driver of the vehicle was also the owner of the vehicle, that rules out women, which takes it down to thirty-eight.”

“Okay. So what now?” Stiles asks.

“Well, I’m glad you’re back, because I was going to ask if you minded if I outsourced,” Mac says.

Stiles starts to ask to who, then says, “To Veronica?”

“Yeah. She’s quicker at this stuff than I am.”

“Go to it. Tell her it’s stat and I’ll owe her a favor.”

“She takes cash, Visa, Mastercard, and Discover,” Mac says, and takes out her phone. Stiles leaves her to her devices. He goes into the kitchen and decides to see if Danny’s awake by taking him a sandwich. He takes two for himself and two for Danny, then heads in the direction of the spare room.

As he approaches, it becomes clear that Danny’s awake, because Stiles can hear his voice. It’s a little low, he’s obviously trying to be quiet, but Stiles lets out a breath and centers himself, listening. “ – know that you’re worried about your brother. I get that. But Stiles, you know, he’s pretty good at this shit. He helped a friend of mine out of a really tough place last year.”

“Yeah?” It’s Ethan’s voice in response.

“Yeah. I mean . . . my friend Jackson got into all this warlock stuff, and I thought I’d lost him. I really did. I thought he was way past the point of no return. But Stiles and the pack managed to snap him out of it and take care of him.”

“I just . . .” Ethan’s voice trails off. “I’ve never been without him.”

There’s silence after that, although Stiles can hear the muffled noises, rustling of clothes, that makes him think Danny is hugging him. He gives the door a gentle knock and pokes his head in. Danny’s sitting on one of the narrow twin beds. Ethan is next to him, his temple resting against Danny’s shoulder while the teenager rubs a hand up and down his spine. “You two hungry?” he asks.

“Starved,” Danny says. Stiles gives them all four sandwiches so Ethan can eat as well. He can get more for himself.

Just as he’s finishing up his meal, his phone rings. He glances down at it and sees Veronica’s number on the caller ID. “Hey, honey badger,” he picks up.

She laughs. “Have I got some news for you,” she says.

“Tell me it’s good news, like, thirty-eight being narrowed down to one.”

“Actually, I narrowed it down to zero,” Veronica says. “One of these people doesn’t exist.”

“Shit. What’s that mean?”

“It’s a fake identity,” Veronica says. “The social is for some guy who died in the eighties. Looks like it was created specifically to procure the car that you saw . . . and to rent a house in Hood River, Oregon. I’ll text you the address.”

“You are the _bomb_ , V, I mean that.”

“Seventy-five per hour at forty minutes is . . .” She laughs. “Two batches of your peanut butter cookies and a visit on spring break.”

“Done and done,” he says. “Gotta go. The game is afoot.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really excited for this chapter. It has flying monkeys! And banter! And revelations!

 

Stiles isn’t thrilled with the idea of setting another fire in a residential district, but he’s also not keen on the idea of charging headlong into enemy sorcerer territory. He doesn’t dare set the house itself on fire, in case Justin and Aiden are there, and he’s hoping to hell that they are. “So how do we get him out of the house?” he asks, directing the question to the pack at large.

“We could just stake it out,” Allison says. “I mean, the guy has to eat. He can’t stay inside forever.”

“He might have laid in supplies, though,” Scott points out.

Allison gives a little shrug and says, “I’m just saying, a six-hour stake-out might not be the worst of ideas.”

Stiles considers, then shakes his head. He wants this shit dealt with. There are too many things that could go wrong with that scenario. What if he leaves out the back door? What if he smells the wolves? What if he has a car in the garage and leaves without becoming accessible to them? “No,” he says. “We need to make him leave in a manner we can predict.”

“He’s a guy, right?” Erica says. When Stiles nods, she says, “Okay.” Then she unbuttons the top two buttons on her shirt and assumes an expression of helplessness. “Ohmigosh, mister, can you help me out? My tire just went flat and I have noooooo clue how to change a tire . . .”

Lydia lets out a quiet snort and says, “Then how did you live this long?”

Stiles is grinning. “Yes, good,” he says. “Allison, how do you feel about playing a damsel in distress?”

“Well, I don’t have Erica’s rack, but I think I can pull it off,” Allison says.

Erica pouts at being sidelined, but Stiles reminds her that it has to be a human who approaches him, because he’ll be able to smell any of the wolves. At this, Ravinder looks curiously at Stiles and says, “Many alphas can hide their scent. Although I suppose it would not matter to you, being in that you’re not a wolf.”

“It’s never really come up,” Stiles says with a nod. “Okay, so, Allison is our point and I’ll be her backup. I will wait at the ‘disabled’ car, but Allison, tase him at the God damned door if you have to,” he adds, and she nods. “The rest of you will, as before, surround the house. But I’m pairing you off. I want everyone to be with someone who can watch their back.”

He divides them into pairs based on fighting skill, so each weaker or inexperienced pack member has a better fighter at their back. He knows that Derek will want to be as close to him as possible, and that he’ll be more focused on Stiles’ safety and well-being than his partner, so he pairs him with Scott, who will have similar problems. Isaac is with Lydia, Boyd with Danny, and Erica with Mac. “Take care of her,” Stiles says seriously to Erica, who nods.

Of course, Allison isn’t able to play the ‘hot babe lost in the woods’ quite as well as Erica was able to, in the safety of their cabin. The temperature is dropping rapidly, and all of them are well-bundled up. Derek is the only exception. He hates anything that might hamper him from making a full shift in a dangerous situation, so he’s still only wearing a sweater and jeans. He’d probably only be in a tank top if Stiles hadn’t gotten annoyed at him. Higher wolf temperatures and healing factors aside, it’s well below freezing. The snow crunches under their feet as they head to surround the house.

It’s a modest two-story in a somewhat ramshackle neighborhood. It isn’t a dump, per se, but the houses are old and they look it. Everything is still decorated for Christmas, which startles Stiles, although he can’t really say why. It feels like months have passed since his peaceful celebration of the holiday. It’s hard to believe that it’s been less than forty-eight hours since Yasmin showed up on his doorstep.

Allison dresses in a lumpy jacket and a colorful scarf and hat, which has the bonus of making her look somewhat younger than she actually is. It’ll help her play the helpless card a little better. Stiles crouches behind the Jeep, tense and anxious. He realizes that he’s expecting that this won’t go well. He can’t say why he feels that way, exactly. It’s just a gut feeling. Things are more complicated than they had first realized, and he’s missing pieces of the puzzle. Too many.

It’s the accomplice that bothers him. Gabriel Khan has no family, and Clara assured him that nobody else from their pack has gone missing. So who is this mysterious man that picked Khan up at the hotel, who’s in this deep enough to have gotten a fake identity just to rent this house? Something’s wrong, and he can’t anticipate, can’t prepare the way he normally would.

So when Allison rings the bell and nobody answers, Stiles isn’t surprised at all. They wait the space of about thirty seconds. She tries again, but Stiles already knows that nobody is going to answer, and even if they did, they wouldn’t fall for her damsel in distress routine. There are plenty of houses to go to; there’s no reason that someone with a flat tire would ring the same bell over and over again instead of moving on to the next one.

“Fuck this shit,” he decides. They’re going to go on the offensive and see what happens. He walks up beside Allison. She nods at him and takes out her lock picks. She works as quickly and quietly as she can, and a few minutes later, the knob turns under her hand. Stiles gestures to indicate that she should cover him while he opens it, and she nods, taking out her crossbow and holding it at the ready.

Stiles pushes open the door to reveal a dark, narrow hallway. He grimaces a little. Close quarters are always difficult for him, and in such an uncertain situation, he doesn’t like it at all.

Fortunately for him, he doesn’t need to go down the hallway. Unfortunately for him, that’s because the attack occurs at the precise moment he takes a step forward.

The creature comes screaming out from the depths of the hallway, literally, making a screeching noise that sends Stiles reeling backwards and clapping his hands over his ears involuntarily. Allison handles it better, taking a bare moment to aim before pulling the trigger on the crossbow. The bolt hits the creature squarely in the chest and its momentum carries it past them, where it sprawls out on the lawn, twitching.

“What the fu – ” Stiles has time for, and then a flood of them pours out of the hallway. There are at least a dozen. They’re human shaped, human sized, but – blue. Blue and winged, with too much hair to be human, and their posture is wrong, sort of hunched over –

“Are those winged fucking moneys?” he hears someone shout, one of his pack; he’s not even sure who. And they are. Created almost exactly in the image from the movies, but without any of the humor. Their mouths are cram-packed with sharp teeth; their fingers end in wickedly curved claws. Stiles feels one of those hands full of claws shred his jacket and shirt only to encounter the chain mail underneath.

Then he hears Allison scream. Above him. He looks up and sees that one of the monkeys has grabbed her and lifted her off her feet. He leaps up and grabs her by the ankle. For a moment they hang there, suspended. Then Allison shoves the taser into the creature’s midsection and pulls the trigger. It lets out another shrill screech and drops her.

Everything dissolves into chaos. There are screams and shouts everywhere, the snarls of wolves, crunches of bones, the smell of blood and singed fur. Stiles sees Lydia get grabbed by one of the monkeys and lifted off her feet the same way Allison was. Erica springs up onto the top of the Jeep and launches herself at the creature, but another monkey swoops in and grabs her before she connects.

“Shit!” Stiles takes aim with his .38, but then hesitates. He’s not good enough to be sure he’ll hit the monkey and not the wolf. His gun is loaded with wolfsbane bullets – it always is – and although he knows the cure, it’s not a certain remedy, especially if the bullet hits something vital. He lowers his gun. Boyd and Danny have leapt after the monkeys at a full run.

Allison is as calm as ever, shooting arrow after arrow and dropping the creatures from the sky. Then one of them just flies straight into her. Stiles is pretty sure she shoots it on its way in, but its weight still carries her down. It disables her long enough for another of the creatures to grab her and take to the sky.

In almost the exact same moment, two of them grab Derek by each arm and yank him up off the ground. Stiles lets out a shout and jumps, grabbing his lupa by the waist. Derek struggles and twists, but can’t get free. The monkeys are stronger than reason could possibly account for. “Let go!” he shouts, as they rise ten, twenty, thirty feet off the ground.

“Not a chance!” Stiles shouts back.

Derek twists again and yells, “Let go _now_ or the fall will kill you!”

Stiles looks up and sees the fear in Derek’s eyes. He’s right. If they get much further off the ground and one of the monkeys manages to shake him free, he’ll be dead. Their gazes lock for the briefest of moments, then Stiles nods and forces his grip on Derek to loosen. He can’t manage to make himself let go all the way, but one more good shake and he’s falling.

Someone grabs him on the way down and he thinks for a moment that it’s one of the monkeys, but he keeps going down. Then he hits the ground with a thud and goes into a roll. He realizes that one of the wolves had grabbed him as he was falling and taken him into a controlled tumble. The impact still jars the breath out of him, but he thinks his bones are intact.

He scrambles to his feet, grabbing at the shirt of whoever caught him – it’s Scott, some distant part of his brain notes – to drag them up with him. “With me!” he shouts, and throws himself towards the Jeep. He doesn’t care who or how many of the wolves manage to get in before he floors the accelerator and takes off, following the monkeys as they fly over the town with Derek in their grasp. Ahead of him, he can see several of the others, barely specks in the distance, with their own captives.

“Turn right!” someone shouts, and he realizes that Scott has jumped on top of the Jeep and is shouting directions down to him so he can concentrate on the road. That’s good. He sees a cross-street and turns the wheel, taking the corner so fast that they nearly fishtail on the slick ground.

But the monkeys are gaining altitude, becoming fainter in the distance, and Stiles knows they can’t keep up. He _knows_ that, but he keeps driving anyway. Even after he can no longer see Derek and Scott’s directions have gone silent, he keeps driving, because he doesn’t know what else he can do. Then, abruptly, he feels the bond to Derek go dark and silent. It’s like someone slammed a wall down between them.

It’s so sudden and disorienting that dizziness washes over him, and the world goes black around the edges. He hears Isaac yelp, “Whoa!” and then wrest the steering wheel out of his hands as the car goes into a spin. He has just enough presence of mind to slam down on the brakes. Isaac keeps the Jeep steady as it grinds to a halt.

Stiles staggers out of the car and leans against the wall to a building, leaning over and heaving until his stomach is empty. Then things settle around him. He wipes the back of his hand over his mouth and stumbles back to the car. Isaac is leaning over Scott, who’s on his knees beside it, looking about as bad as Stiles feels. “Allison?” Stiles chokes out.

Scott shakes his head. “I can’t – can’t feel her,” he says, hoarse and unsteady.

“We’d better get back to the others.” Isaac holds up a hand. “I’ll drive.”

Stiles tosses him the keys without argument. He gets into the passenger seat and sits with his head between his knees, hands braced on the back of his neck.

Things back at the rented house are chaotic, but not as bad as Stiles feared. The monkeys, being creatures of magic, dissolved into ash as soon as they were killed, so they don’t have bodies everywhere. There are no police, no sirens. Stiles doesn’t know if there was magic done to keep anyone from noticing, or if the neighborhood has somehow been emptied of people, and he’s not about to stick around and find out. He looks at the house distrustfully, but it seems to have emptied its cache of nasties.

“Yas and Ethan already went through it,” Boyd pants, out of breath from the fighting. “No one there. It’s dead empty.”

Stiles gives a little nod. Slowly, like he’s in a dream, he reaches out and picks up Allison’s fallen crossbow. Scott takes it from him, clutching at it with white-knuckled hands. They pile into their cars and drive several blocks away. He sees an empty parking lot next to a store that closed some time in the dark ages, and pulls over. Yasmin tumbles out of the car. “Stiles, I – are you okay, I don’t – ”

“I’m fine.” Stiles looks up and hears her quick intake of breath. He _knows_ his eyes are glowing crimson with rage and distress he can’t hold back. He takes quick stock of his pack. Some of them have torn and bloody clothes, but the injuries are healed. The mage hadn’t bothered to program a lack of healing into this new beastie. He wonders if there are limits to what the magic can create, if he had concentrated on strength and speed – he shakes his head. It’s irrelevant. “Who’s missing?” he bites out, scanning the crowd. Yasmin and Ethan are both there. He sees Boyd supporting Danny, and he knows Isaac and Scott are with them. That’s it. They’re missing Derek, Allison, Lydia, Erica, and Mac. That’s half his pack. Gone in the blink of an eye.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Isaac swears shakily, as they all take stock.

Stiles stares at Yasmin as she hastily knuckles tears off her cheeks. She’s suddenly the only girl standing in a clump of guys. It seems important to him. He can’t put his finger on why. Then he looks at Ethan, likewise trembling, blood staining the leg of his jeans.

“Did he have a lupa?” Stiles asks abruptly.

“I – what?” Yasmin asks.

“The alpha you killed, of the sorcerer pack, did he have a lupa?” Stiles asks. He realizes he’s shouting and tries to tone it down.

“I don’t think so,” Yasmin says. “I mean, we can usually tell.”

That’s true, and Stiles knows it. Justin had figured out Derek was his lupa before he had – although he was suffering from a lack of education. “But if they didn’t want you to know for some reason – could they hide it?”

“Like, if they had a pact that if one of them was killed, the other would take horrible revenge?” Ethan asks slowly, picking up on Stiles’ train of thought.

“Look at this,” Stiles says, with a sharp gesture. “Look at who’s missing. You two both lost your lupa. I bet he meant to grab Mei or Ravinder, too, but wasn’t able to since Ravinder grabbed her and ran. Then there’s us. If he has half a clue who I am, grabbing Derek makes sense. It’s common knowledge that Derek is my lupa. The rest of us, well, he didn’t know, so what did they do? They grabbed all the girls. That gives them a pretty good chance of splitting up any existing pairs.”

“Jesus,” Yasmin says, rubbing her hands over her face.

“Does it matter?” Danny asks, somewhat hesitant.

“Well,” Scott says, “it means he probably won’t kill them.” He looks at Stiles hopefully. “Right?”

“I think it’s been pretty well proven that if he wanted to kill any of us, a whole lot of us wouldn’t be breathing right now,” Stiles says. “No. It’s slow torture. He’s not satisfied by killing us. He wants us to suffer the way he has.” He lets out a breath. He can deal with this. He _has_ to deal with this. He takes out his phone and dials Deaton.

The Druid picks up on the second ring. “Is everything okay?” he asks, in that tone which means he already knows that everything isn’t.

“I need Jackson,” Stiles says, forcing himself to remain calm. His voice only cracks a little. “How soon can he get here?”

There’s several long moments of muffled conversation. Stiles shifts back and forth from foot to foot, trying not to scream. Then Deaton gets back on the phone. “He’s booking a flight from Fresno to Portland. It’s about a seven hour – what’s that?” Another pause. “No, that one had a layover. Hang on, he’s looking for something nonstop.” This next pause is somewhat lengthier. “He can’t find anything without a stop, but he did find one without a layover. It’ll take about four hours.”

“We’ll pick him up at the airport. Tell him to text me his flight info.”

“All right. It’ll take a little time for me to undo the binding on him.”

Stiles has to choke the words out. “Okay. And tell him – ” His voice breaks. What can he possibly say to Jackson that will impress upon the teenager the importance of his arriving in Portland and not fucking off to have his jollies with black magic again?

“Stiles,” Deaton says, “it’s fine. He’ll be there.”

Deaton hangs up without another word. Stiles has to take a few deep breaths and gather himself together while the rest of the pack looks on uneasily. Then his phone chirps. He looks down. Jackson’s flight is leaving just after five and is set to arrive at nine thirty. Stiles prays that nothing will be delayed. “Danny, I want you to go pick Jackson up. Take Boyd with you.”

Danny nods. “Portland’s only like an hour away. What are we doing until then?”

Stiles pushes both hands through his hair, leaving it standing up in lopsided spikes. Neither of the identities they had were used in the area except for the places they’ve already checked. He doesn’t know what his next move should be, and he hates that almost as much as he hates the dead air at the end of his bond with Derek.

Scott clears his throat quietly. “We should, um. We should maybe call Chris.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Stiles says, with conviction. There’s no way he wants to call Chris Argent and tell him that his princess got abducted by flying monkeys. He has no excuse _not_ to do so, however. But if he does, Chris will also be on the next flight up.

Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing, Stiles reasons. The hunter has years of experience. Maybe handing him the reins would be a good idea. The only problem is that he’s not one hundred percent sure that Chris can be trusted not to hurt the members of the alpha pack. They _are_ killers, and not only that, but they’ve killed hunters – in self-defense, but still – Chris would be justified in executing them under the Code. And he doesn’t think that the alpha pack members that are left would be any more thrilled to see him than he would be to see them. He killed Kali. She deserved it, but still, it can’t be a fond memory for any of them.

“We’ll call Chris when and if we have to,” he finally says, “but I don’t think we’re at that point yet. There’s a lot of bad blood between the alpha pack and the hunters, and I . . .”

A thought suddenly occurs to him. One thought leads to another, and he stares out into space, watching the dominoes fall.

“What is it?” Yasmin asks, looking at him closely.

Stiles holds up a hand and then slowly starts to talk through his theory. “Let me lay this out . . . just a number of facts. Fact one: Khan has an accomplice. It’s not a relative or a former pack member. And it’s not casual, either – the guy is invested enough that he got himself a fake identity and rented a house and bought a car. Fact two: hunters are pretty good at moving quickly and quietly, under the radar, and probably frequently have need to procure fake identities. They also all seem to favor those damned black SUVs, which was the type of car the accomplice was driving. Fact three: the hunters are aware of the sorcerer pack. Chris said that hunters had been sent after them, but Justin got there first. So what if the accomplice is one of the alpha pack hunters?”

“That all seems pretty damned logical to me,” Yasmin says.

Ethan nods, but then adds, “But I’m not sure where it gets us.”

“Two things. For one thing, it means that their partnership is probably fragile and founded on a hell of a lot of mistrust and ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, and partnerships like that tend to fail or be open to manipulation,” Stiles says, “but that’s something that we’ll need more later than we do now. Secondly, it gives us an avenue of investigation.” He chews on his lower lip. “I need to find out who the hunters that went after the sorcerer pack were, and I need to find out who the hunters currently on the alpha pack’s tail.”

“This explains something else, too,” Scott says suddenly, and Stiles gives him a questioning look. “Well – these guys seem to know a lot about _us_. Specifically, about your methods. Like, the decoy hotel room and everything. After what happened to the _last_ alpha pack hunters, a lot of them might have made a study of your methods.”

“That’s somewhat terrifying,” Stiles says, “but no less true. I just don’t know how they would have known I would have even gotten involved.”

“Look, it can’t be coincidence that all this happened _here_ ,” Boyd says. “Only a day’s drive away from Beacon Hills. Maybe you were always meant to get involved.”

Stiles rubs a hand over his face. He doesn’t say what he’s thinking – that with a sorcerer involved, it was completely possible that the idea to go to him had been planted in Yasmin’s mind. “I’m going to call – no, I’m going to _text_ Chris.” If he calls up the hunter, there’s too much chance he’ll ask to talk to Allison, or ask why she’s not the one calling. “Let’s get that information and go from there.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Derek comes to with a start and looks around wildly. He swallows hard and takes a deep breath, even though it feels like he can’t get enough air past the metal, silver-lined collar that’s wrapped snugly around his neck. Then he takes another, and another, before he realizes that he’s breathing far too fast and the panic is starting to win. The next breath he pulls in is through his nose, and it’s calmed down a little by the scent of pack. He can see them, yes, but scent is something a little deeper, more visceral, and it calms the panic because even though he’s separated from Stiles, he’s not alone.

The last thing he remembers is the monkeys dropping in altitude as they started to fly over a more sparsely treed area of the forest. It looked like there had been a forest fire there recently. There was a wide patch of empty land, and from the aerial view he had gotten a good look at the circle drawn in it, surrounded by arcane symbols. One of the other monkeys had flown over to him and just hovered in front of him for a moment before one hand had lashed out and clawed right through his shirt, snatching the protection charm he was wearing and snapping the cord so it came off in its hand. Then his captors had dropped him, still a good three stories high. The impact itself hadn’t knocked him unconscious, he doesn’t think, but all the same, he doesn’t remember anything after that. He presumes that has something to do with whatever the spell he had been dropped into was for.

Once the panic backs down a bit, he purposely ignores his own situation lest he lose his grip on rational thought, and turns his attention to the others. He can already tell that Stiles isn’t with him, but is surprised to see that besides him, it’s only the girls. They’re all chained to heavy support beams, sitting on the cement floor, with metal cuffs around their wrists that draw their hands behind their backs. They’re then connected to the collar before running to the wall with enough slack that they could sit or stand. The walls around them are solid brick, with no windows other than some half windows at the top of the room. A basement. He’s glad Isaac’s not there. There’s a solid steel door on one side of the room, with a bar across it. Across the room, Justin and Aiden are held with similar bonds. “Is anybody hurt? Besides them?” he adds, indicating the two alphas with his chin. They look like crap. Blood had crusted on one side of Justin’s face, which is practically a solid purple with bruises. Aiden’s clothes are shredded and stained with blood.

“Nothing too bad,” Erica says. “A few bruises.”

“I broke a nail,” Lydia says. She sounds pissed.

“I don’t think I skinned my knees like that since the third grade,” Mac reports.

“And my shoulder is dislocated,” Allison announces. “Which someone gets to help me fix.”

“You just need me to brace you?” Erica asks, squirming over so she can press her shoulder and upper arm into Allison’s back.

“Yeah. And for you not to be grossed out by the crunching noises you’re about to hear.” Allison takes a minute to make sure the sleeve of her sweater is between her skin and the metal cuff, to protect her, before she turns herself sideways and plants a foot against one of the supports. Then she grits her teeth together and pushes out with her leg, the cuff pulling at her arm and Erica keeping her upright until she can twist and let her arm slide back into joint. She goes limp against Erica. “That sucked,” she says. Mac tries not to gag.

“Sounded painful,” Lydia says. To Derek, she adds, “What about you? You don’t look so hot. In a manner of speaking.”

Derek swallows hard, tipping his chin back to stare at nothing. One fist clenches and releases a couple times before he just shakes his head. He doesn’t care about his own injuries. He doesn’t dare analyze his own situation because otherwise he’ll freak out.

“Ohhhhh-kay,” Lydia says, not wanting to push the issue. She looks over at the alphas. To be honest, she barely recognized Justin underneath all the blood and bruises. If she hadn’t known he was missing, she might not have guessed it was him. “You two okay?”

“What the _hell_ are you guys doing here?” Justin asks, sounding baffled, his voice only a little bit slurred.

Derek tilts his head over to look at them. “Yasmin showed up on our doorstep, saying she needed help.”

“You’ve seen Yas?” Justin goes from being a hurt and bewildered young man to an alpha in moments. Everything about him sharpens and snaps into focus. “She’s okay?” The tone of his voice implies that the answer had better be yes.

“Just bumps and bruises. And scared,” Derek offers quickly. He knows better than to fuck with an alpha, no matter how messed up they might be. “We had the rest of your pack. Not all healthy, but accounted for.”

“My brother?” Aiden demands.

“He was hurt,” Lydia says. “We actually had to bust him out of the hospital. He had some cracked ribs and a pretty bad concussion. But last time we saw him, he seemed to be doing okay. Mei was hurt pretty badly. Ravinder’s been taking care of her, but it helped that we have a pack member with some real medical training. Scott says she’s going to pull through.”

“And having people to look after will help him keep his temper in check,” Allison adds. She knows that Scott hates it when he loses control. She starts to slowly pull herself up into a sitting position under her own steam.

“No offense to your boy there, but I wouldn’t be concerned about _his_ temper if I were in these guys’ shoes,” Erica says. “Stiles is gonna go ballistic. Do these jokers even realize who they’re up against?”

“I hope not,” Derek says. He shifts a little, trying to find a position that’s a little more comfortable. But when he tries to brace himself with one hand it just moves with the other, and he freezes. Instead, he pulls his knees up to his chest and takes a minute to remember to breathe. “I hope they have no idea at all.”

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Justin proclaims to the ceiling. “I am the leader of the God damned alpha pack, one of the most powerful werewolves in the _world_. I should not be so relieved that some freakin’ teenager is the one trying to rescue me.”

“I was relieved when he was the one trying to save me,” Mac offers. “You know, after I was convinced he wasn’t going to kill me.”

“Yeah, sure, you were relieved, but you’re . . . wait, who are you?” Justin frowns. “You guys have new pack members?”

“Dude, we’re up to ten now,” Erica says. “Ten and a half if you count Jake . . .”

Mac holds up a hand and waves, or at least tries to, although she ends up holding up two hands. “Hi. I’m Mac. What’s your name?”

“I’m, uh, Justin,” he says. “That’s Aiden. Ten and a half?”

“Jake,” Allison says. “He’s sort of an honorary member? He’s my cousin, but his parents are real assholes, so we, uh, we sort of stole him and then my dad basically adopted him. But Dad’s Dad, so, Jake isn’t allowed to actually be part of the pack until he’s thought long and hard about it, and turned eighteen. He’s sixteen now.”

Aiden is frowning at them. “You can’t just . . .”

Justin gives a little snort. “Yeah, like Stiles doesn’t do whatever the hell he wants. I don’t think the word ‘can’t’ is in that kid’s vocabulary.”

“Sure it is,” Erica says. “As in, ‘No, Erica, we can’t have sex here.’”

Derek rolls his eyes and mumbles something like ‘why me’.

Justin just shakes his head a little. He’s the one who had explained what a lupa is to Stiles, so he’s well aware that Derek and Stiles are a nontraditional pairing. It doesn’t surprise him a bit that Stiles has chosen to get his needs met by another member of the pack. “So if it’s ten, and Mac is the only new face I see, who are the other two?”

“Boyd was not long after we met you guys,” Allison offers. She’s still leaning against Erica, as much for comfort as support. “We picked him out and invited him into the pack. He’s like our back up den mother. He has four younger siblings, and unlike Scott, he won’t nearly kill us all by confusing furniture polish with spray grease.” She smiles at the memory, but then looks away, biting her lip. She and Scott have been apart before, sure, but this is the first time he’s been taken away from her.

“And then Danny,” Lydia adds. “He was sort of an accident. Part of the whole mess with Stone.”

“He really doesn’t like lizards,” Mac says.

“Right, I heard about him,” Justin says. “He’s the one you had to get stoned before he could shift. Stiles told me about it.”

Lydia shrugs. “Danny’s always been big on self-control.”

The longer they banter, the more Derek feels the tension start to build up in his spine. He gives a little shudder, letting the conversation wash around him while he struggles against the restraints. He can’t feel Stiles at the other end of their bond, can’t tell what’s going on with him, can’t be sure he’s okay. It’s terrifying.

“Whoa there, buddy,” Erica says, when she notices. She’s chained to the same post as he is. Mac and Lydia are together as well, and Allison is by herself. “Slow down. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

Derek struggles for another minute or two, but true to Erica’s statement, one of his arms starts to protest loudly enough that he actually has to listen. He slumps onto one side, panting.

“Dude,” Justin says, “You okay?”

Lydia gives Justin a withering look. “Does he look okay?” she asks tartly, but then immediately modifies her voice to something more soothing. “Derek, Stiles is going to come for us. You know that. Try not to freak out.”

“That’s not . . .” Derek has to stop and swallow because everything is throbbing in time to his heartbeat, the pounding in his head, the nasty burning, grinding feeling of the bones in his arm, the ache in his chest. “That’s not it. Of course he’s coming.”

Somewhat hesitantly, Mac decides that cuddling is in order, or at least as close as she could get. It had made her feel better when she was scared, and although she wouldn’t say it out loud, Derek smelled scared even though he looked pissed off. She squirms around until she’s closer to Derek and manages to move them around until his head and shoulders were pillowed on her legs instead of hard cement.

Aiden is the one tactless enough to say, “If that’s not what you’re worried about, why are you having a freak-out?”

“Maybe,” Erica says, “it’s because nosy tampons like yourself are asking questions about things that are none of your business.”

Aiden’s jaw sags open a little and he stares at her. Sure, he remembers her being kind of mouthy at the trial, but he would remember if she started slinging around insults like that. Derek just huffs a small laugh, because Erica is cowed by no one and always hilarious, and she can always be counted on to protect her pack.

“Don’t feel too persecuted,” Allison says. “She’s said worse to people she likes better.”

“That’s hot,” Justin says, looking at Erica speculatively. “Are you open to the concept of threeways?”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Lydia says, stifling laughter in her palm.

Erica considers this briefly. “With you and Yasmin? Yeah, I’d hit that.”

“Sweet,” Justin says. “We’ll talk later.”

Some of the tension washes out of Derek as he listens to his pack manage to joke around, even in a situation like this. No one would go so far as to say he’s relaxing, but he’s no longer on such a hair trigger for the moment. Having physical contact with Mac helps remind him of the here and now, so he doesn’t get lost in the memories and the fear that goes with them.

Before further plans can be made for sexual escapades, there’s a screech of hinges that makes all of the wolves flinch, and the door on one side of the room opens. The man who enters is nondescript. He’s Hispanic and of a middling height, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. “I can see you’re all enjoying yourselves,” he remarks, somewhat sourly.

There’s a beat of silence, and then Erica says cheerfully, “I think I saw a porno like this once,” and Derek nearly chokes on a bubble of laughter.

“Is there any porno you _haven’t_ seen?” Lydia asks, arching her eyebrows at Erica.

“Oh, sure. Tons,” Erica replies, her tone matter-of-fact. “I don’t like bodily fluids unless it’s cum or spit. That rules out a whole category of porn right there.”

“Thanks for sharing that,” Aiden says. “Justin, you should make a note. You know, if you’re going to be – ”

“As fascinating as this conversation is,” their captor interrupts, “I figured I would come in and check on you. Those collars aren’t too tight, are they?”

Allison rolls her eyes. “Who writes your dialogue?”

“I’ll take that as a no,” he replies. “Of course, I’m sure you must have a great deal of questions for me, now that you’ve seen that I’m behind this.”

Everyone seated on the floor gives him a blank look. Then Mac raises her hand. “I have a question.”

“It’s not because you’re new,” Lydia says, with an elegant shrug. “I’ve been in the pack as long as anyone here, and I have no idea who that is.”

“Oh.” Mac turns to their captor. “Okay. Who are you?”

The man is studying their blank looks with narrowed eyes. It’s clear that he doesn’t find their banter amusing at all. “You’re new, so of course you wouldn’t recognize me, but the rest of you can stop pretending. It’s embarrassing.”

Derek quirks an eyebrow at him, but it’s Allison who responds. “I’m not sure who’s supposed to be embarrassed here, but I’m pretty sure we aren’t. We’re just confused.”

“And this from you,” the man says, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “If anyone here is going to know who I am, it should be the Argent princess.”

"Hey, guys," Erica says, "I think he's a hunter."

Allison’s eyebrows climb. “Just because I’m an Argent doesn’t mean I know every hunter out there. I’m sure I’ve never worked with you, and pretty sure that my father hasn’t. At least not recently.  So . . . fuck you, I guess.”

Now he’s clearly irritated. “My name is Ruben Gutierrez,” he snaps. “My brother is Luis Gutierrez. Does that ring any bells?”

There is a little bit of visual conferring going on between the pack. “No, not really,” Allison finally has to admit.

“It does sound vaguely familiar,” Lydia says. “Luis Gutierrez does, I mean. The fact that you bothered to mention him means that he’s probably the one we directly interacted with.”

“If by ‘directly interacted with’ you mean ‘you got him sentenced to fifteen years in prison,’” Ruben snaps, “then sure.”

“Look, I hate to break this to you,” Erica says, “but Stiles gets a lot of assholes put in jail. It’s one of his main strategies. So that doesn’t help as much as you think it does.”

“On top of that, the people he has put in jail deserve it. Or something worse. So I guess what we should really be asking is why did Stiles have Luis Gutierrez put in prison?” Allison follows up.

“He was one of the alpha pack hunters,” Justin speaks up suddenly. “I don’t remember the name, but . . . the family resemblance is there. He was one of the guys that Stiles got put in jail after the shoot-out in Beacon Hills, or so I would presume.”

“Oh,” Allison says and then smiles. It’s far from a pleasant expression. “So was he the asshole that shot Isaac in the stomach and Scott had to dig the bullet out with nothing his bare hands? Or was he the one that got Lydia in the leg, or Derek clean through the chest? Or maybe he’d like to be the one to say he nearly blew Stiles’ head off but only got his ear instead?  Which one was he?”

“He was an extremely good shot,” Ruben says, “so I’m guessing it wasn’t the last.”

Allison shows teeth, and it would be very hard for an outsider to see her as one of the humans in the pack with that look on her face. “Well, since all of us made it out alive, I’d have to say that his aim was actually shit.”

Ruben’s eyes narrow, and he shakes his head. “Perhaps in time he’ll be known as the hunter who almost killed the boy in red.”

“Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, asshole,” Erica says. “Will you get to the fucking point already?”

“You really don’t remember having met me,” Ruben says. “The arrogance astonishes me.”

“I’m not really sure you can call them arrogant because you failed to make an impression,” Mac says. “I mean, I’m just saying.”

Justin lets out a snort of laughter.

“You could try something novel like telling us who the fuck you are and why you’re so pissed at us, instead of sitting around making veiled comments and waiting for us to figure it out on our own,” Lydia suggests. “Just a thought.”

“We met at the conclave,” he says.

“Okay, were you pretentious blowhard number one, two, or three?” Erica asks.

“You know, those two,” Allison says, pointing at Mac and Lydia, “weren’t at the Conclave. And the rest of us were a _little busy_.”

Ruben shrugs. “Your alpha would remember me. He did address me directly . . . although certainly without any of the respect I was due.”

Justin gives a snort. “Yeah, you should hear the way the little prick talks to me. It’s nothing personal.”

“Well, it _might_ have been personal, if you were acting like a cunt critter,” Erica says with a shrug, “which you certainly are now.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Aiden says, and then they’re all laughing at her language.

It’s Derek who looks up, having finally calmed down enough to really analyze their surroundings and what’s going on. “You were the one he argued with during his impromptu seminar. The guy who stormed out at the end.”

Allison takes her cue from Derek, from Stiles’ lupa, and forces herself to calm down and back away from the anger, even laced by the hilarity that only Erica can add. Then she casts her mind back to the meet-and-greet that Stiles had held at the end of the conclave, the man he had argued with. “Right. The guy who hated it that some people were actually listening and others were willing to at least think about the fact that werewolves are people too.”

Justin gives Allison a somewhat appalled look. “Stiles got up and said that _at the conclave_?”

“Yes?” Allison gives him a game smile. “Look, the whole thing turned really awkward when the Council of Elders did some things that they shouldn’t have, and Stiles was outed, and there was sort of a werewolf issue. He had to make the best of a bad situation, and it actually really worked out.” Her face falls. “Until now.”

Justin can only shake his head. “That kid. I swear.”

“Don’t sound so pleased with yourselves,” Ruben says. “There are plenty of other hunters who agree with me. I don’t know what Stiles’ game is, and I don’t care. It ends now.”

“That’s not new,” Derek says. There are always hunters out to kill his pack. He curls up a little closer to Mac, or at least tries to.

“It’s not a game,” Allison informs Ruben coldly. “And I really don’t see how you’re so confident. You’ve pretty much declared war on our pack, the alpha pack, along with most of my family, and you’ve probably pissed off a lot of other hunters while you’re at it.”

“Well, that would be telling,” Ruben says. “Let’s just say that your precious alpha isn’t the only one who can be underhanded.”

“Wait, I’m confused,” Justin says. “If this is about you getting revenge on Stiles for being Stiles, a sentiment which I can at least partially understand, what the hell am I doing here?”

“I swear to God, if you used _us_ as bait for that kid, we’re going to be pissed,” Aiden adds.

Ruben shrugs. “Strange times make strange bedfellows,” he says. “Khan wanted the alpha pack. I wanted the boy in red.”

Justin’s face goes flat and deadly. “Well, next time you see Khan, tell him that I never leave a job unfinished.”

Another shrug. “I doubt very much he’ll care about your threats,” Ruben says. He checks his watch. “If you’ll excuse me,” he says, and leaves without another word.

“Jesus.” Derek lets his head thud back against the support beam, and nobody seems to know what to say.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the first time, I found myself really enjoying writing Jackson in this. It only took, what, 550K words for me to get a bead on his character? =D

Stiles studies the list of five names that Chris has sent him. None of them look familiar. It takes him a minute to realize that Chris has only sent him half of what he asked for. He’s sent the list of names of the hunters who went after the sorcerer pack, but not the hunters who are currently in the alpha pack hunters. He supposes it’s possible that Chris just doesn’t know, but sends a second request in case he somehow missed it.

In the meantime, he takes the five names he does have and sends them to his father, to Deaton, and to Veronica, to see what, if anything, they can come up with.

Given the idea that the pack members taken had been very specific, Stiles felt safe going back to the house in Hood River. He and the pack scoured every inch of it. There was no congratulations balloon this time. But unlike the hotel room, this had been lived in. This, he thinks, was probably their base of operations. It’s not where Justin and Aiden were kept – he can’t smell either of the wolves in the house – but two men have been living there. There’s furniture, some beer and soda in the refrigerator, toiletries in the bathroom, a hamper of dirty laundry.

But it’s easy to tell that a sorcerer has been there, too, because the hairbrush has no hairs in it, there are no toenail clippings in the trash, nothing that might give another sorcerer a way to find him. Stiles sighs and pushes a hand through his hair. Then he checks a few places for fingerprints. The door handle has been wiped down, the sink and the shower are clean, and he’s starting to despair when he finds one – on the handle of the refrigerator.

“Just had to have your beer, didn’t you,” he says with satisfaction. “Couldn’t wait ‘til you’d left.”

He dusts it with cocoa and take a photograph to send to his father. Sheriff Stilinski texts him back to let him know that he’s on the job – there was a messy three-car accident downtown – but he’ll run it as soon as he gets back to the office. Stiles says okay, because there isn’t much else he can say.

After a thorough scouring of the house, Danny and Boyd leave to pick up Jackson, and Stiles heads back to the cabin with the others to update Ravinder and Mei. The former is clearly anxious, because they were gone quite some time, and his face falls when he sees who returns, and more importantly, who doesn’t.

Yasmin gives him a quick summary of what’s happened, and Ravinder approaches Stiles with a grave expression. But instead of asking Stiles if he’s all right, he says, “What can I do to help?”

Stiles swallows, takes a minute to focus, and shows him the list. “Are any of these names familiar?” he asks.

Ravinder reads the list quickly, then shakes his head. “No. I am sorry.”

“Okay.” Stiles lets out a breath. “Then we’re in ‘hurry up and wait’ time right now. I need to – I’m going to go for a run.”

“I will join you – ” Ravinder says.

“How’s your leg?” Stiles interrupts.

Ravinder sighs. “It is well enough. And you are not my alpha.”

“Fair,” Stiles says. “I can’t stop you if you want to come along.”

He promises his pack that he’ll stay in the perimeter of the surveillance they set up, and within the cell phone signal so they can call him if he’s needed. That doesn’t give him a lot of area, but he can run in circles if he has to. He just needs to _move_. Ravinder jogs along at his side wordlessly, only occasionally wincing when he comes down on his bad leg.

They’ve gone around the perimeter twice when Ravinder stops suddenly, thrusting out an arm to bring Stiles to a halt as well. Stiles nearly falls over, then gives Ravinder a questioning look, seeing the way his head is tilted to one side, listening. “A car,” he murmurs. “I can hear the engine.”

“Danny, maybe – ”

“No,” Ravinder says. “Too big.” A pause. “It’s stopped now. Still fairly far away. They will approach on foot.”

“Let’s get back to the cabin,” Stiles says, and Ravinder nods. They both take off at a fast clip. By the time they arrive at the house, Scott and Isaac are standing over Stiles’ laptop, watching two men approach on one of the little cameras that Allison hooked up.

“Hunters for sure,” Scott greets them. Stiles looks at their gear and concurs. He waves Ravinder over, but the two men are too bundled up for Ravinder to be sure if he’s seen them before.

“To be honest,” he says, “we haven’t had many run-ins with the alpha pack hunters since Vivien’s group was dispersed. For at least six months afterwards, we weren’t even followed, we don’t think. This new group is cautious, having learned, perhaps, from the experiences of the others.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, “but if they’re involved in what’s going on now, I want to question them.” He purses his lips. “We’re moving,” he finally says, abrupt and sure. “We can’t stay here anymore. Scott, can Mei be moved?” he asks, and Scott nods. “Okay. Stay here and get her ready, pack up anything that we need to bring. Isaac, Yasmin, Ethan, you’re with me. We’re going to go get these guys.”

He’s satisfied to see from the surveillance footage that the men are walking right into one of the traps that Allison set up. They had known there were only a few easy ways to approach the cabin, and she had set up snares at all of them. If they’re lucky, they’ll be able to catch the men without a drop of blood being shed.

As it turns out, they’re half lucky. One of the men gets swept up into the snare. The other makes a run for it when the wolves burst out of the woods, snarling, eyes shining crimson. They tie their captive up before even releasing him from the snare, then drag him over to the cars. “Where are we going?” Yasmin asks.

It’s an excellent question, and Stiles wishes more than ever that they were in Beacon Hills, where they could use the warehouse or even the old Hale house, if they needed a secure place to go. But they aren’t, and there’s no time for wishing. “We’ll have to get a hotel room,” he says. “We can stay there long enough to ask this guy a few questions and then ditch it.” He gestures to the hunter and says, “Let’s get this guy in the Jeep.”

“That’s not secure,” Ethan says. “Why don’t we put him in the other car, in the trunk?”

“ _No_ ,” Stiles chokes out, and every muscle in his body goes tense like it might snap. His eyes shine bright crimson, and even Ethan steps back, startled. Stiles lets out a breath. “I – sorry. I’m sorry. I’m just – just put him in the Jeep.”

“Okay, Christ,” Ethan says. He and Yasmin lift up their captive and shove him into the car.

Scott comes out of the house, supporting Mei. He looks at Stiles and says, “Dude. You okay?”

“No, I – ” Stiles shudders. He’s going to lose it. He doesn’t even know what ‘it’ is, precisely, but he’s very sure that it’s flying out of his grasp. The world is closing around him. He feels tight and claustrophobic. His heart is pounding in his chest, too loud and fast to be normal. “I – I’m having a panic attack,” he chokes out.

Scott hands Mei off to Ravinder, who gets her into the car. Stiles is keenly aware that they don’t have _time_ for this, that they have to _go_ , but the urgency only feeds into the attack and makes it stronger. The world pulses in and out of vision. Scott is saying something, but the words are far away, unimportant. “Just – just put me in the car,” he says, thrusting his keys at Scott. “Just have to – wait it out.”

“Okay. Can I – ” Scott starts, and then he’s gently grasping Stiles by the shoulders. He steers him into the passenger seat of the Jeep. Isaac climbs into the back with their captive; Ravinder settles in on the other side. Yasmin is driving her car, with Mei and Ethan.

Stiles sits in the passenger seat with his head down. Each breath comes in a little sob. It’s been a long time since he had a panic attack this bad, and he knows from painful experience that there isn’t a good way to break himself out of it. Resisting will only make it worse.

Things blur out for a while. He hears other people talking around him, is vaguely aware of the motion of the car. Scott can handle things for a while. Scott will have to handle things for a while.

Gradually, inch by inch, he starts to come back from it. He feels a little light-headed, dizzy, almost drunk from the leftover endorphins. He stares at the sign a few yards away from the car. A cheap, non-chain hotel. “Where are we?” he asks, his voice hoarse.

Nobody says anything about his attack, which is a relief almost painful. “Cascade Lock,” Isaac tells him. “We drove towards Portland. Figured that’d get Jackson to us sooner. I texted Boyd and Danny to let them know where to find us.”

“Ravinder’s getting us a room,” Scott adds.

“Okay.” Stiles lets out a shaky breath. His legs are numb and weak. Scott has to help him out of the car.

It’s late evening at this point, but the hotel is deserted. He’s aware that they probably look all sorts of suspicious, but as long as nobody actually calls the police, he doesn’t care. Although with that in mind, he takes the portable radio scanner out of his luggage and sets it up in the hotel room so he can be _sure_ nobody’s called the police. It seems that nobody has.

Their captive is looking around as Ravinder and Ethan get him tied to a chair. He seems more confused than anything else. Stiles presumes he’s wondering why he’s still alive. He takes the other chair and swings it around so he can straddle it and face the man. “Hey,” he says, “what’s your name?”

The man gives him an extremely skeptical look. “It’s, uh, Dave,” he says.

His name obviously isn’t Dave, but Stiles doesn’t care. “Okay, Dave,” he says. “First things first: I’m not going to hurt you. And no, this isn’t good cop, bad cop. See, the thing is, we have a common enemy. And I’m not even sure you realize that. This werewolf that you guys are working with, he might want to take down the alpha pack, too. But that doesn’t make him your friend.”

Dave looks at him blankly and says nothing.

Stiles presses onward. Having something to focus on helps drain away the rest of the panic attack. “Look, I know the only way you could have found us in the woods is with his help. And the thing is, he really thinks he has a valid beef with the alpha pack. But they were just doing their job. His alpha, that they killed, was a seriously bad dude. So he doesn’t really have the right to come seeking revenge.”

At this, Dave licks his lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Stiles sighs. “He’s going to betray you. He’s not someone you can trust.”

“No, I, seriously . . . I have no idea what you mean.”

Scott reaches over and rests a hand on Stiles’ shoulder. “Dude, he’s not lying. Or if he is, he’s really, really good at it.”

Stiles frowns. “Gabriel Khan,” he says to Dave. “Ring any bells?”

Dave gives his head a little shake.

“Well, fuck,” Stiles says. “If _you_ aren’t working with Khan to try to wipe out the alpha pack, who the hell is?” He pulls out his phone and pulls up the list of hunters that had been involved in trying to track down the sorcerer pack, and holds it up in front of Dave. “Do you know any of these people?”

“Well, they’re all hunters,” Dave says, somewhat dubiously.

“Jesus, you’re useless,” Stiles says. He tucks his phone away and says, “He doesn’t know anything. We’d better get out of here and find a safe location to plan our next move.”

“What do we do with him?” Ethan’s gaze is fixed on Dave, his eyes shining red. “We should kill him.”

“For fuck’s sake, _no_ ,” Stiles snaps. Ethan turns and growls at him. “Look, I’m not asking you guys to be buddies. I’d be pissed if hunters followed me around all the time, too. But the fact of the matter is that we have bigger fish to fry and leaving a body behind will only bring us trouble.” He turns back to Dave and takes a knife out of his bag. He holds it up and says, “I’m going to leave this in that bureau over there. I have faith that within the next fifteen minutes or so, you’ll manage to get it out of there and get yourself free. Or scoot over to the phone and dial 911, I don’t care. The point is that we’ll be long gone by the time you get out of here, so don’t even try to follow us.”

Dave gives him a suspicious look, obviously wondering why Stiles is sparing his life, but nods. Stiles tucks the knife away in one of the bureau drawers. The others are already on their way out. Then Stiles hesitates, frowning. “Wait. If Khan _isn’t_ the one who told you where to find us in the woods, how did you know where we were?”

Dave swallows, but apparently decides that he’ll repay Stiles’ generosity by answering the question. “I don’t know. Gina got a call from someone. I don’t know who it was.”

“Gina’s your boss?” Stiles asks, and Dave nods. “Was it a protracted discussion? Or short?”

“Mediumish,” Dave says. “Someone she knew, and trusted, but not a close friend or acquaintance, I don’t think.”

Stiles nods. “Thanks,” he says, and turns to go. He locks the hotel door behind them and leaves the key in the lock to delay Dave’s exit a little more. Then he gets back in the Jeep, in the driver’s seat.

“You okay to drive?” Scott asks him, and Stiles nods again. “Where are we going?”

“Let’s find another hotel,” Stiles says.

They drive about ten miles west of Cascade Lock to another small town and find a non-chain hotel set a little ways off the main drag. Yasmin goes in and gets them a room. It annoys Stiles that they have to use the alpha pack’s identities, but none of his own pack are quite old enough to get a hotel room without drawing someone questioning looks, and he doesn’t want to draw attention.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Allison has drifted off into an exhausted sleep, leaning against Lydia, by the time there’s a noise and the door opens again. She blinks herself awake, looking around blearily. Her shoulder aches fiercely, but she’s determined to ignore it. Derek still looks like a tragedy, shaken and pale. Erica’s ready to spit fire. Lydia is strangely calm, and she’s keeping Mac calm.

Two men walk into the room. One of them is Ruben. The other must be Gabriel Khan, or so Allison assumes. Now that she can see them together, they don’t look anything alike. Gabriel’s skin is several shades darker, darker even than Ravinder’s although lighter than Boyd’s. His hair is long and tied back in a neat braid. While Ruben is dressed in dark fatigues, Gabriel is dressed casually, in jeans and a T-shirt. He’s not particularly muscular, not like a lot of the werewolves they’ve met.

“What do you think?” Ruben asks, gesturing.

Gabriel nods slowly as his dark eyes skim over the ground. “Two alphas and four betas,” he says. “It’s good enough.”

“And one human,” Ruben says, then shrugs. “In case you happen to need one of those.”

“Probably not,” Gabriel says. “But it’s never a bad idea to have a disposable hostage or two.” He turns to Ruben. “I need to prepare. Get them into position.”

He turns and leaves the room. Ruben looks after him and then rolls his eyes. Then he smiles at the collected wolves. “Well,” he says, “the spell only requires five, so, who shall be spared?”

“Mac,” Derek says immediately.

“Derek,” Allison says. Derek narrows his eyes at her. “Derek, you’re wounded. The rest of us aren’t.” She’s not sure why his injuries aren’t healing. She’s seen it happen before, but only from wounds gained from an alpha. But she’s also heard that the healing can be psychogenic, and if Derek is beating himself up for what’s been happening, or stressing over his separation from Stiles, that might be causing it.

“Mac’s the newest member of the pack,” Derek points out.

Mac swallows. “Yeah, but . . . I _am_ a member. I can handle it. I won’t fink out. And Stiles . . . he can’t live without you. So it should be you.”

“This is certainly heartwarming,” Ruben says, clearly amused. “Should I decide for you?”

“Derek,” Allison says, staring at him.

“Derek,” Lydia agrees.

“Then it’s decided,” Ruben says. “Derek, you can be the focal point of the spell.”

Allison gives the hunter a narrow-eyed stare and says quietly, “You do realize that we are going to destroy you, right?”

“Yes, I’m shaking.” Ruben reaches out and unchains her from the post, his hand grasping her injured shoulder. She chokes back a strangled noise and forces herself to remain silent. “I’ll admit that your alpha has some impressive kills on his resume, but I really am not afraid of him.”

“Oh, in this moment, he’s not the one you should be afraid of,” Allison says. But she doesn’t resist as he drags her out of the main part of the room and chains her to a hook on the wall instead. She studies the room, watches the way he’s moving them around. She hadn’t noticed, but the supports that they were chained to are set up in a specific pattern. Five of them, in a pentagon.

He puts Aiden and Justin opposite each other at the broadest point, then puts Derek at the top and Lydia and Erica at the bottom. Mac is dragged over to be secured next to Allison. “What’s going to happen now?” she asks Allison, in a tiny voice that trembles despite her best efforts.

Allison shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

“It won’t kill us,” Justin says. His voice is matter-of-fact, without trembling. “He already did this to us once. I guess two wolves wasn’t good enough for whatever he had in mind, which explains some about why he – ” His voice is cut off as Ruben casually picks up a length of metal and hits Justin across the face with it. The alpha reels, but the chains hold him up. He leans over and spits out blood. “Why he went after you guys,” he finishes raggedly.

“That’s one good thing about werewolves,” Ruben says, smiling. “They’re resilient.” He swings the crowbar forward and slams it into Justin’s stomach. He doubles over, making the chains pull his arms behind him at an awkward angle, and hangs there for a moment before shaking it off. “So I can hurt you as much as I like.”

“There’s no need for that,” Lydia says in her usual arch tone, maintaining her composure rather admirably.

“Of course not,” Ruben says. “I’m just enjoying myself.”

Against her better judgment, Allison tries to appeal to his humanity. “Look, I’m sorry about your brother, okay? Maybe Vivien didn’t tell all of her crew what my dad had told her Stiles was capable of. But that’s on her, not on us.”

Ruben shrugs. “My brother made a stupid mistake and now he’s in prison. So what?”

Allison gives him a cold look. “Then this is about the Conclave. You’re just pissed off because Stiles talked rings around you and made you look like a fool.”

“I will grant you that your alpha is very good at what he does,” Ruben says. “I’m doing this for the benefit of hunters everywhere. He may be able to ingratiate himself into one hunter family or two, but he’ll have a hard time kissing ass when he’s going back home in a box.”

Derek struggles futilely against the chains, baring his teeth at Ruben. “If you touch a single hair on his head, I will rip your throat out,” he says. “With my teeth.”

“Oh, I very much doubt that,” Ruben says. “Given that I plan to send you back to him a piece at a time. Gabriel’s insistence. He’s very sore about losing his mate.”

“Fuck,” Justin says, quietly. “I wondered if that’s what this was about.”

“You killed an alpha but not their lupa?” Derek asks, looking at him as if he’s insane.

Justin swears. “I didn’t fucking _know_. I thought – maybe – but I can’t kill people on a suspicion. Most of the time it’s not a big deal because when the alpha is killed, the lupa will go nuts and I can easily identify them. They don’t _want_ to live.” He looks at Derek and adds, “ _You_ know that, I’m sure.”

Derek gives a reluctant nod. “But sometimes the alpha and lupa will have a prearranged agreement,” he says heavily. “Like Stiles knows, but . . . he also made me promise that I would make sure the pack was taken care of first.”

“Well, apparently Gabriel and his alpha had a different arrangement,” Ruben interjects. “Something about making life a living hell for whoever took him down.”

“That’s funny,” Allison says sweetly, “because that’s the same agreement that Stiles and I have about what _I’m_ supposed to do if he’s ever killed.”

Ruben walks right over to her, leaning into her personal space. “I wonder what your father will do when he finds your bloody, mutilated corpse.”

Allison lunges forward as far as the chains will allow. For the briefest of moments, her teeth sink into Ruben’s ear, but then he pulls back with a startled cry before she can do any real damage.

“Feral, just like the rest of them,” Ruben snarls. “You should all be put down.”

“I’m flattered to hear you have such a high opinion of us,” Gabriel’s voice says from the entryway, and everyone looks over. He’s changed clothes, and is dressed in a black robe with silver markings. Allison remembers what Clara had said about his reliance on symbols and ceremony, so the garb doesn’t surprise her. She can smell incense, sandalwood she thinks, and from the way Mac is wrinkling her nose, it must be quite powerful.

Ruben brushes this off. “Are you ready or aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Gabriel says, lifting his gaze to study the pack. Then he smiles. “Try to relax,” he advises. “This might hurt.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Ravinder offers to go get something to eat, and brings Ethan with him. Scott gets Mei settled on one of the beds and checks her injuries over. They’re healing well, and he says he doesn’t think she’ll suffer any setbacks from having been moved around so much. She’s obviously in some pain, but she’s handling it. The others come back with boxes of fried chicken and biscuits. Stiles isn’t hungry, but forces himself to eat.

While they’re waiting, Veronica calls. “Look, I couldn’t find any connections between any of these guys and the area where you are now,” she says. “Sorry. But two of them have been to Beacon Hills recently. I don’t know if that’s important.”

“Which two, and when?” Stiles asks.

“Ruben Gutierrez and Bernice Knox,” Veronica says. “About six months ago. June.”

Stiles is blank for a moment, then says, “Fuck. That was the week of the Conclave. There were a zillion hunters in Beacon Hills that week. It’s probably not significant.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful,” Veronica says. “I’ll be on standby if you need anything else.”

“Thanks, V,” Stiles says, and starts to say something else, although he’s not sure what. He feels like he should tell Veronica that her friend has been abducted, but it’s not like Veronica can do anything about it, and it would only worry her. Before he can make a decision, the door to the hotel room opens and Danny and Boyd come in, with Jackson behind them, as sullen as ever. “I’ve gotta go,” he adds, and they exchange goodbyes and hang up. He lets out a breath. “Thanks for . . . bringing your dog?”

Jackson scowls at him. “Her name is Wilma,” he says, as if this matters. Wilma, the dog in question, is a malnourished looking pit bull with three legs. “Deaton made me bring her. He says she helps ground me, or some fairy magic bullshit like that.”

“Ohhhhhkay,” Stiles says, and offers a hand for the dog to sniff. She does so, then licks it. He scratches behind her ears. “Uh, Jackson, meet some alphas. That’s Mei on the bed, Ethan over there, Yasmin, and Ravinder. Guys, this is Jackson. Druid in training. Or something like that.”

Jackson’s scowl doesn’t lessen. “Let’s get this over with.”

In truth, Stiles is glad that Jackson’s not being nice. He always gets nervous when Jackson tries to be nice, as he suspects an ulterior motive. “Danny brought you up to speed on the way here?” he asks, and Jackson nods. “What do you need?”

“A map of the area,” Jackson says. “The more detailed, the better.”

Ravinder rises to his feet. “There is a convenience store on the corner which should have such a thing,” he says. “I will procure it.”

“When did you even get a dog?” Scott asks, trying to keep Stiles (and himself) distracted while Ravinder’s gone.

“Few weeks ago,” Jackson says, with a roll of his eyes, like he isn’t sure why he’s bothering to answer. Danny gives him a look, and he adds grudgingly, “She was dumped at the clinic. Some jackass had kept her chained up in his backyard and she got free and got hit by a car. The person who hit her brought her in and when the owner found out how much the treatment would be, he said to put her down. Which we _obviously_ weren’t going to do.” Jackson scowls. “So I paid for it, and Deaton let me keep her.”

“Is she your familiar?” Boyd asks.

“This isn’t some tween magic novel,” Jackson scoffs disdainfully. “She’s just my dog.”

Boyd raises his hands in surrender, but his lips twitch despite himself.

“What have I got to work with?” Jackson asks.

“Let’s start with this,” Stiles says, handing over Justin’s ring. Ravinder comes back with the map a few minutes later. Jackson spreads it out on one of the beds and sits in front of it with his legs folded up underneath himself. Wilma jumps up onto the bed next to him, resting her head against his thigh. Jackson strings the ring on a piece of leather cord and lets out a breath.

“Dude, you guys are staring,” he says. “It’s fucking creepy.”

Everyone immediately tries to find ways to occupy themselves. None of them do a very good job of it, but Jackson rolls his eyes goes back to what he’s doing. The ring starts to swing in slow circles over the map. Jackson closes his eyes and his face goes blank. Stiles can’t feel the slow build of energy prickling at his skin, because his own magic has been stripped, but he knows it’s there. He hates this. Hates the idea of Jackson ever getting his magic back, if he’s going to be honest. Maybe it’s petty, but he doesn’t trust him.

Minutes trail by. Stiles tries not to fidget, and fails dramatically. He wishes he had a kitchen. Boyd sees the way his fingers are tying themselves into knots, goes into his things, and takes out a notebook for Stiles to mangle.

“Nothing,” Jackson finally says.

“What does that mean?” Yasmin demands.

Jackson looks at her like she’s from another planet, then seems to notice how physically attractive she is, and moderates his tone. “There are a few possibilities,” he says. “Number one and most likely from what Danny’s told me, is that the sorcerer has some kind of barrier around them that prevents any magic from finding them. Two is that the item isn’t magically significant enough to build a strong connection. Three is that the owner is dead.”

Yasmin lets out a little whimper, and Ethan wraps an arm around her waist, supporting her.

“I doubt it’s the second,” Mei says, her voice hoarse. “I remember the day Justin took that ring off Trevor’s hand. The way he . . .”

“Justin loved Trevor like a brother,” Ravinder says, with a quiet nod. “He never takes that ring off.”

“Well, in case it is number two, let’s try something else,” Stiles says. He’s already pawing around in Derek’s stuff, and comes up with his sketchbook.

Jackson gives him an incredulous look. “How the fuck am I supposed to put that on a string and swing it around over a map?”

“Jesus, asshole,” Stiles says, losing his temper. “I don’t – ”

Danny moves between them, putting a pacifying hand on Stiles’ shoulder while holding up his other hand to surrender to Jackson’s glare. “It has to be something small?” he asks, and Jackson gives a sullen nod. To Stiles, he then says, “Is there anything else we can use?”

Stiles rubs both hands over his face. “Derek wasn’t really big on personal possessions.”

“Scott,” Jackson says suddenly, “lemme see your Claddagh ring.”

Scott instinctively pulls his hand back to his chest in a defensive move. “You mean, the Claddagh ring you used last year to work black magic on me and turn me stupid?”

“Wasn’t much of a turn,” Jackson says, and then he sees the crimson flare into Stiles’ eyes and swallows almost nervously. “But yeah, that same ring. Allison has one that matches, right? You bought them together, they’re a matched set. That should work.”

“Okay,” Scott says, although he’s obviously somewhat reluctant. He pulls his ring off and hands it over.

“If that doesn’t work, we can use the keys to the Camaro for Derek,” Isaac says, digging around in Derek’s bag. “Laura gave him the car, right? And he’s had it for years, it’s probably something he’s owned longer than anything else he has. They’ll be in here somewhere.”

Jackson nods, and Stiles huffs out a breath. “Jesus, I should’ve thought of that, why didn’t I – ” His phone rings. He looks down and sees that it’s Chris. “Fuck,” he says. “I’m going to go outside and take this so I don’t distract Jackson while he works.”

“I’ll go with you,” Yasmin says.

Stiles nods and steps outside, takes a moment to pray that Chris isn’t calling him because Allison isn’t responding to his texts, and grabs the call just before it can go to voice mail. He even manages one of his traditional greetings, so as not to alarm Chris that something’s wrong. “Stilinski fraternity; you raise ‘em, we haze ‘em.”

“Cute,” Chris says. He sounds particularly sour. “You’ve got trouble.”

“ _That’s_ new,” Stiles says, trying not to roll his eyes.

“Look, I understand that the alpha pack can’t look too fondly on hunters,” Chris says, “but if you’re going to help them out, it would benefit you to refrain them from _killing them_ while you do it.”

Chris’ voice is tight and angry. It takes Stiles a minute too long to work out that Chris is _actually_ angry, that this isn’t his usual gruff annoyance, that something is actually wrong. Once that sinks in, the words Chris spoke follow. “Wait, what? Who killed a hunter?”

“Well, everyone is assuming that you guys did,” Chris says.

“When? Where?” Stiles goes for broke. “Hell, who and how, while I’m at it, just tell me what the fuck is going on.”

The anger has faded from Chris’ voice, replaced by wary confusion. “About half an hour ago, the body of a hunter was found in a hotel in Cascade Lock. The room was rented out to one of the alpha pack, and I know that you’re with them.”

“Jesus,” Stiles says. He feels like he’s been punched in the stomach. “Chris, I didn’t. _We_ didn’t. Yes, we captured him, he was trying to sneak up on us. We tied him to a chair and I asked him some questions, but he didn’t know anything, so I left him there. I put a knife in a drawer so he’d be able to get himself free but not in time to follow us. Jesus, Chris, I swear to you, he was still breathing when we left.”

“Well, someone took your knife out of the drawer and used it to cut his throat wide open,” Chris says. “It can’t have been long after you left. He was still tied to the chair.”

Stiles pushes a hand through his hair. “Jesus,” he says again. “This case has all sorts of teeth I didn’t expect when I left. I thought it was simple – some enemy of the alpha pack, they’ve got dozens, attacked them and kidnapped a few of them to torture or some shit. Simple search and rescue. But now every time I turn around, something else has happened that I just don’t understand. I’m missing something and I’ve got no fucking clue what’s going on.”

“Look, if you say you didn’t kill him, I believe you,” Chris says, “but nobody else is going to. So watch your back.” There’s a pause. “I’ll see if I can find out what might be going on.”

He hangs up without another word. Stiles realizes that in all the excitement, he didn’t ask Chris for the names of the other alpha pack hunters. He supposes it’s no longer relevant. He knows that they weren’t involved. He looks over at Yasmin and says, “Let’s not tell the others about this yet. Everyone’s freaked out enough.”

“If someone was following us that closely, they may still be following us,” Yasmin says quietly.

Stiles nods. “Yeah, but for some reason, he or she doesn’t seem interested in striking against us directly. But still. No more going out alone. Let’s get back inside.”

Jackson has no luck with Scott’s ring, Derek’s keys, Lydia’s necklace, or anything else they throw at him. Minutes trickle by while everyone tries to distracted themselves. Stiles tries not to pace, but the small, crowded hotel room makes him antsy and claustrophobic. It’s nearly eleven o’clock when Jackson throws in the towel.

They sit in silence. Stiles concentrates on his breathing, tries to focus. Scott sits down next to him, shoulder-to-shoulder, trying to help keep him calm, and Stiles is intensely grateful for his presence. He knows that Scott is worried about Allison, and that focusing on Stiles is helping him as much as it’s helping Stiles himself.

“What now?” Danny finally asks.

Jackson rubs a hand over his face. “Look,” he says, “do you have at least a general idea of where they are?”

Stiles thinks about it, then nods. “Yeah.”

“Okay. He’s got them behind some magical barrier, right? I might be able to sense that, if I could get close enough to it.” Jackson sees their skeptical looks and tries to explain. “Let’s say that you’re walking around a normal neighborhood, and you go by all these normal looking houses, and then suddenly you’re walking past an empty lot. Nothing there at all. That’s what it would be like. A blank spot in my senses. But it’s not the sort of thing I can sense from a distance.”

That makes sense to Stiles. He grabs the map. “Okay,” he says. “We were here when we got attacked.” He makes a red ‘x’ on the map where the house was. “Then we drove down this road here, following the monkeys. How long do you think we drove?”

It’s blurry in all their memories. Stiles thinks no more than five minutes. Isaac says maybe as many as ten.

“I was going about forty miles an hour,” Stiles says. “I remember that because I kept wanting to go faster, but the roads were slippery. They were pulling away from us, but not _fast_ , so they weren’t flying at the speed of sound or anything. I’d wager somewhere between sixty and eighty miles per hour.”

“Jesus,” Jackson says. “I hope Lydia didn’t get bugs in her teeth.”

Everyone laughs at that, startled. Even Stiles musters up a slight smile.

“So if Derek and the others went behind the barrier somewhere between five and ten minutes after they got taken, and they were flying in this direction at sixty miles per hour . . .” He does some quick math and makes a rough circle on the map. “This is about where they wound up.”

“That’s a big area,” Boyd says.

“Then we’d better get started,” Stiles replies. He frowns a little and then adds to Jackson, “Will it matter that it’s dark?”

Jackson shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. For a moment it looks like Scott or Boyd or someone else responsible might mention the concept of getting some sleep, but then they decide against it. “Let’s get moving.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had I mentioned that I love plot twists? =D

 

After some time to think, Stiles decides to bring everyone back to Hood River to join the search. He’s anxious about what might happen if they split up, and if they do find the sorcerer, he might need help. Even Mei comes along, although Scott doesn’t want her in action. In theory, all they’ll be doing is walking through the woods, unless they find something.

Jackson is the only one who will be able to sense anything out of the ordinary, and that irks Stiles, because it means that they can’t split up to cover more ground. They all have to stay with Jackson, who’s skulking along with his hands in his pockets. The area that they have to cover is about fifteen square miles. It’s a lot of ground, and it’s all unreservedly wild. The monkeys had quickly left the city and gone into the wilderness. There’s a small, two-lane road that they can follow to start, but then they quickly have to venture onto rough terrain.

His father calls around midnight to say that they’ve run the fingerprint. No matches. Stiles grinds his teeth in frustration.

“Can’t we hurry this up?” he asks Jackson.

Jackson gives him a pissed off look. “Do you even have any idea what I’m doing?”

“Walking too slowly,” Stiles snaps back.

“No, asshole,” Jackson says. “I’m walking at the pace that I need to walk, because I have to keep my eyes on what’s around me so I don’t walk into trees while at the same time extending my senses in every direction to look for blank spots. It’s like seeing with a third eye, and it’s not fucking _simple_ , so stop distracting me.”

Stiles’ jaw clenches, but he manages not to make an angry retort. Jackson is right, and on top of that, Jackson is doing him a favor, and he one hundred percent needs to keep his shit together right now.

It’s nearly two in the morning when Jackson says, “Dude, we’re done for the night.”

Stiles rubs his hands over his face. “We’ve only covered a _third_ of the territory, if that – ”

“Look,” Jackson snaps. “I can’t sense past the end of my nose right now. They could be sitting right in front of me and I would miss them.”

After a minute, Stiles forces himself to take a deep breath and swallows down the bubbles of panic that are threatening. “Okay,” he says, and lets the breath out. “Okay. Let’s go . . . get some sleep.” He gestures for everyone to gather around. “I want to head back to the cabin.”

“The cabin that they know we were staying at?” Isaac says.

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “Look, we’re not safe no matter where we go. The cabin is at least defensible, and they probably won’t expect us to go back there, so it’s probably the last place they’ll look. We all need to get some rest. Even me.”

The others agree. Scott drives the Jeep again, because Stiles is clearly exhausted on top of panicky. He doubts he’ll sleep at all. He can’t remember the last time he slept without Derek there. But Scott and Isaac are intent on dragging him in to get some rest. The alpha wolves set up camp in one room, and he and the pack set up in the other. Stiles quickly sets up watches, and then they crash on the bed. Jackson sneers at them but takes the floor, and if Danny shifts to his wolf form and sleeps in a pile with him and Wilma, everyone agrees that they won’t say anything about it.

Stiles sleeps restlessly, tossing and turning for the first hour, then finally dozing off. He wakes from a nightmare once, then again when Isaac and Scott trade watches. He’s thinking about just getting up when Jackson draws in a sharp breath and sits bolt upright. Danny shifts, startled, and Wilma rises as well, pressing her face into Jackson’s shoulder.

“What is it?” Stiles asks.

“Someone just did some _major_ mojo,” Jackson says, blinking a little sleepily. He rubs a hand over his face. “Jesus.”

“How can you tell?” Stiles asks.

“I just can,” Jackson says. “I can feel it. Like . . . vibrations in the air, in the ground.”

“The same way animals know an earthquake is coming, sort of?” Stiles asks. Jackson glares at him but then reluctantly agrees to the metaphor. “Any way to know who or what it was?”

“No,” Jackson says. “But it wasn’t . . . nice. It was . . . dark.” His voice hitches a little. Wilma whines, and Jackson absently scratches behind her ears.

Stiles hesitates, feeling awkward. “You okay?”

“As okay as I’ll ever be, I guess,” Jackson says. He flops back down into the nest of blankets he’s made on the floor. “Thanks to you. Now go back to sleep, jackass. And don’t ever tell anyone I said that.”

“Sir, yes sir,” Stiles says, amused at the fact that Jackson apparently doesn’t realize or doesn’t care that the wolves are all awake, all listening, still themselves despite the fur and quite capable of understanding.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Allison jolts awake when she hears the loud boom of the door to the basement swinging shut. For a few moments, she’s disoriented, looking around wildly. Then things come into focus. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but Gabriel’s ritual had dragged on and on for hours. She had no idea what he was doing, but it involved a lot of overly dramatic dialogue about summoning of forces, praying to different spirit guides, and burning of incense. His reliance on ceremony was definitely a crutch and might be quite useful in the long-term, but in the short-term it had put her to sleep.

Her gaze flickers over to the five wolves that are still chained to the posts. They’re all unconscious, sagging, held up by the restraints. She can see them breathing, however, and Erica is shaking her head like she’s struggling to regain consciousness. She would be the one most accustomed to battling against pain and fatigue, so Allison guesses she’ll be the first to recover.

Derek and Justin both look terrible, pale and sweaty, their wounds re-opening and oozing blood.

“He used them to power his spell, didn’t he,” Mac says, her voice quiet, terrified, but held together.

“Yeah,” Allison says. “Their life energy. It could easily have killed them. If it didn’t, it’s because he’s keeping us alive for a purpose.”

“Ahhhhfuck,” Erica slurs out. “M’ head’s killin’ me.”

“Just take it easy,” Allison calls over to her. “Don’t push yourself.”

“Haven’ fel’ this bad since m’last seizure,” Erica says. She shakes herself harder and looks around. “We ‘lone?”

“Yeah,” Allison says. “Khan must have finished up and gone to rest. That spell would’ve taken it out of him just like it took it out of you guys.”

Aiden and Justin are stirring now, too. Lydia’s eyes are fluttering. Derek remains stubbornly unconscious, and Allison can’t blame him. “Wha’ time’sit?” Aiden mumbles.

“No clue,” Mac says. “They took all our watches and everything.”

“Everything?” Erica focuses on Allison. Allison just gives her head a little shake. She wants to make sure Ruben isn’t going to come in and check on them, before she initiates any escape plans.

He doesn’t, but Gabriel does. He comes back in with a bottle of water, and he forces some of it down each of their throats. Most of them drink thirstily, without prompting. Derek has to be slapped awake so he can drink, which makes Erica growl and lunge, pulling at the chains. Gabriel ignores her.

“What about breakfast?” Justin asks. “Don’t we need to keep our strength up so you can use us to kill more people?”

“Maybe later,” Gabriel says, and leaves without another word.

“Son of a bitch,” Justin growls.

Allison closes her eyes and counts slowly, ignoring the grumbling of her stomach, the pain in her wrists where they’re chained to the wall behind her, the tense worry she feels from seeing how pale and disoriented Derek is. She counts to one hundred, decides it hasn’t been long enough, and then counts to five hundred.

Then she opens her eyes and says, “How about we get out of here?”

“Looking forward to it,” Erica says.

“How?” Aiden looks skeptical.

“Do you really think that asshole got _all_ of my tricks when he searched me?” Allison says, and shakes her head. “Okay, Mac, I’m going to need your help.” They’re both chained with their hands behind their backs, but if she turns so she’s angled into the wall, Mac will be able to reach her. “Take off my pants.”

“Whoa,” Aiden blurts out. “Yes, please.”

There’s a spate of nervous giggles. Mac says, “My first lesbian experience is when I’m chained to a wall. Somehow I’m not surprised . . .” She fumbles a little and manages to get the button and zipper of Allison’s pants undone. “Now what?”

“There’s a paper clip hooked to the edge of my underwear. Can you get to it?”

It takes a little more fumbling, but Mac manages to unhook it and press it into Allison’s hand. “Here you go.”

“This might take a while,” Allison tells the others.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Lydia says.

“Should I zip up your pants?” Mac asks.

“Nah, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Justin says, and several of them giggle nervously again.

Allison unfolds the paper clip and starts to work on the lock. The angle is awkward. She can barely twist her hands around enough to reach the lock on the cuffs, let alone manipulate it with any skill. It quickly becomes clear that it won’t work. “Mac, let me see your wrists,” she says. The two of them press close together, and Allison tries to work on Mac’s lock instead. It’s easier but by no means easy.

“What will I even do if you get me out of these?” Mac asks nervously.

“My advice is to run like hell,” Allison says. “Get to Stiles and bring him here.”

Minutes drag by as Allison continues to work on the lock. She lets out a gusty sigh. “I just can’t get it.”

“Let’s try the other way,” Mac says. “Veronica taught me how to do this once. I’m not an expert or anything, but it’s worth a go.”

They pass the paper clip back and forth, taking turns. Allison’s hands are starting to go numb and Mac is drooping with weariness by the time they hear a quiet click.

“Did – did I get it?” Mac asks uncertainly, and Allison pulls free of the chains. “Oh my God! I actually got it!”

“Shhh,” Allison says, but she’s laughing a little. She looks at Derek and then the others, and decides against wasting her time trying to free them. Even with her hands free, it would take time to pick through all the locks, and every minute she lingers is a greater chance that one of their captors will come inside.

She heads over to the door and gives the handle a heave. It doesn’t so much as budge. “Barred from the outside,” she says, but in truth she had expected this. “I’ll go out a window.”

The windows are above her head by several feet, and there’s nothing for her to stand on. She can just barely touch the ledge if she jumps, but then doesn’t have the force necessary to break them, and they don’t seem to open. “Here, try this,” Justin says. He hauls himself to his feet and extends one leg. He can just barely press his foot against the opposite wall. It’s a little wobbly, but Allison manages to climb up on top of it, balancing precariously. It still isn’t quite high enough, so Justin gradually inches his foot up the wall until she can reach.

“God, that is _hot_ ,” Erica says, her eyes gleaming.

“Pays to be flexible when you’ve got a girl like Yas,” Justin says, grinning at her.

“You’re such a lech,” Aiden tells him, and Justin just shrugs.

Allison pulls her shirt over her head and wraps it around her hand to protect it. Justin lets out a low whistle, and she rolls her eyes and ignores him. But when she slams her hand against the window, there’s a crackle of electricity and she’s thrown backwards. Justin manages to break the worst of her fall, but she still goes tumbling to the floor.

“Fuck,” she says. “Magically sealed. Now what?”

“Get the rest of us free,” Justin says. “We’ll wait until they come in through the door and then kick their asses.”

Allison gives an approving nod. She starts with Justin. He’s an alpha, and even wounded, he’ll be worth more in a fight than any of the betas. But she’s barely inserted the paper clip into the lock when there’s that screech of hinges and the door opens.

She wastes no time. If this is the only chance she’s going to have to get out, she’s not going to stand around and think about it. She just runs forward. The way the basement is set up, there’s a platform with a railing just inside, and then several steps down on either side into the room itself. She launches herself up, grabbing the railing to flip herself over and planting a foot right into Ruben’s chest. He staggers back, startled, and she darts for the exit. He grabs her by the hair and pulls her back, and she sees the flash of metal as he pulls out a gun. But rather than taking the time to bring it around and aim at her, he just fires into the room.

Allison feels the flare of pain along the pack bond and rips free of Ruben’s grasp, feeling some of her hair come out as she does so. She whips around involuntarily to see Derek hunched over, face twisted in pain and blood starting to soak through his T-shirt in his lower abdomen.

“The next one will be wolfsbane,” Ruben says. “Do you want to bet you can get the gun away from me faster than I can shoot one of them?”

Allison swears viciously, but then puts her hands up in surrender. She can hear Derek grunting in pain as his body tries to push out the bullet.

“That’s disgusting,” Mac says faintly.

“You’re not wrong,” Derek grits out.

Ruben half-turns and frowns at Gabriel, who’s entering the room behind him, as he drags Allison back over to the post. “Why was she still chained to the wall?”

Gabriel yawns. “Why does it matter?”

“I _told_ you to chain her back to a post by herself when you were done with the spell,” Ruben snaps. “I _told_ you that she would get free if you left her chained where anybody else would be able to reach her.”

“She’s just a human,” Gabriel says, disdain dripping from his voice.

“She’s a _hunter_ ,” Ruben says. “And you’re better off not underestimating her.” He drags Allison over to the post opposite Derek and gets her secured to it. Then he moves Erica so she’s chained up with Lydia instead of with Allison. Erica tries to take his head off, but he jams a Taser into her side and pulls the trigger. She’s still spasming weakly while he gets her chained up again.

Then he proceeds over to Derek, who bares his teeth at the man. “Don’t you fucking touch me,” he snarls.

Ruben looks amused. “Don’t be such a baby,” he says, and takes out a knife. Mac makes another faintly horrified noise and Lydia winces as he uses the knife to dig the bullet out of Derek’s stomach. “All better.”

“You just keep telling yourself that,” Derek mutters, but the wound is healing, and the pain is already fading. Ruben just smirks at him before heading for the door.

“Fuck,” Allison says, when Ruben and Gabriel are gone. “Sorry, guys.”

Derek shakes his head. “It was worth a go. We’ll have another chance.”

“I still have the paper clip, so I guess I can keep working on my own cuffs,” Allison says, although she doubts she’ll be able to do much with them. “Until then, we’ll just have to wait for Stiles.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Stiles spends the next few hours shifting restlessly, his mind chasing itself in circles. If the alpha pack hunters aren’t responsible, then it seems like someone else is behind this. But who? And what could they possibly gain from having killed the hunter that Stiles was going to let go? None of it really seems to make sense. There are too many pieces he’s missing.

He’s up with the sun, but he doesn’t want to drag the others out of bed after their late night, so he starts baking. It’s as good a coping mechanism as any. They still need to eat. And he doesn’t know when they’ll get a chance to eat again.

It’s about eight in the morning, and he’s starting to wonder at what point it will be acceptable to wake Jackson so they can get back to work, when his phone rings. It startles him, and he nearly drops it when he sees that the caller is Chris. He lets out a breath and answers it. He can’t think of a clever greeting. “Hey.”

“Where are you?” Chris demands.

“What?” Stiles asks, feeling slow and stupid.

“It’s not a complicated question, Stiles, _where are you_?”

“In a cabin in the woods outside Hood River,” Stiles says. “Why?”

“Because things just got a lot worse,” Chris says. “The rest of the alpha pack hunters were killed during the night.”

Stiles nearly drops the bowl of batter. “What the _hell_?”

“Details are sketchy right now, but apparently something came into their campsite and just slaughtered them. These were experienced hunters, Stiles. Maybe not quite the caliber of Vivien and her crew, but nothing to sneeze at. And it looks like they were attacked by wolves.”

“Jesus,” Stiles says. “I suppose ‘I didn’t do it’ will only get me so far?”

“Look, I know you didn’t,” Chris says, “but _no one_ besides me is going to believe that. You’ve been set up, Stiles, and set up good.”

“This doesn’t make any fucking _sense_!” Stiles resists the urge to throw the bowl into the wall. He’s aware of the others are gathering, the alpha pack as well as his own, and he puts the phone on the counter and puts it on speaker so they can all hear. “What possible reason could I have had to go after the alpha pack hunters?”

There’s a marked hesitation on the other end of the phone.

Stiles starts to feel dread build up in the pit of his stomach. “Chris,” he says slowly, “what do you know that I don’t?”

Chris is clearly talking through gritted teeth. “You _did_ have a reason to go after them, Stiles. You just didn’t _know_ it. Or at least you had a reason to go after one of them. One of the new alpha pack hunters was a man named Max Loesch. Is that name familiar?”

“Vaguely, I guess, but Christ, I do meet a lot of people – ”

“Loesch was one of my father’s men,” Chris interrupts. “He was one of the men who poisoned your father after the hit and run.”

Stiles does drop the bowl now, although he manages to get it into the sink. “No,” he chokes out. “Those people are in jail.”

“Most of them, yes,” Chris says. “One of them made a plea bargain – ”

“Yes, I _know_ that, I was _there_ ,” Stiles snaps. “One of them agreed to testify against Gerard and the others, I remember, but he _still_ got ten years even with that agreement. So don’t you fucking _tell_ me that he’s out of jail – ”

“He’s not,” Chris snaps. “Loesch isn’t the one who took the plea bargain. He’s the one whose lawyer successfully argued that because he wasn’t offered the chance, that he shouldn’t have been convicted in the first place. We’re pretty sure bribes were involved, in any case, his conviction was overturned and he was released.”

Stiles’ hands are clenched into fists so tight that he can feel blood trickling down his palms. He feels small and scared; he’s suddenly sixteen again, watching his father struggle to remain conscious in his hospital bed. It takes effort, but he pulls himself together. “Are you telling me,” he says, quiet and deadly, “that one of the men who poisoned my father is walking the streets?”

“Well, no,” Chris hedges, “not since he was murdered last night.”

“Chris,” Stiles snarls. “For how long?”

Chris sighs. “Nearly a year ago. It was during the whole mess with Sebastian Stone. You had enough on your plate, so I just – didn’t say anything. I went to Loesch and made it _very_ firmly known that if he ever came to Beacon Hills again, I would deal with him. Personally.”

“Wow, that’s really fucking heartwarming, you son of a bitch,” Stiles says.

Scott grips him by the shoulder. “Stiles,” he says quietly, “we don’t have time for this.”

Stiles has to take a deep breath. “Okay,” he says. “Loesch was one of the alpha pack hunters. They were all murdered in a bloody spectacle and now everyone thinks that I did it because he tried to murder my father and basically got off scott free.”

“Yeah,” Chris says, his voice heavy. “Stiles, whoever set this up was – was very good. He knew things, about you, about the alpha pack – he’s smart and he knows what he’s doing, and right now _every_ hunter in a two hundred mile radius is about to come down on you. You _can’t_ fight your way out of this.”

“Then what the fuck do you suggest?” Stiles asks.

“Run, you idiot,” Chris says. “Run like hell and _don’t stop_. We can get this sorted out, but you have to get out of dodge.”

“I can’t,” Stiles chokes out.

“Why not?”

“Because they – they have Derek.” And a number of others, but Stiles is still hoping that they can somehow get out of this mess without him having to tell Chris that Allison was taken as well. He supposes that getting pissed off at Chris for keeping secrets from him is immensely hypocritical, given the givens. “And I can’t leave without him.”

“Son of a bitch,” Chris says.

“Look, there may be a way to prove my innocence, or at least figure out who’s pulling the strings,” Stiles says. “The hunter I talked to yesterday – he somehow found us here, at this cabin. He says that Gina, his boss, got a call from someone who told them where to look. Her phone should have a record of that call.”

“So one hunter called another hunter,” Chris says. “Big deal. That doesn’t prove anything. We’ll only have your word that that’s what the call was.”

Stiles rubs a hand over his face. His mind works furiously as he tries to figure out a way around this. He can’t run. Can’t fight. “Okay,” he says slowly. “I’m going to turn myself in.”

“You’re going to _what_?” several voices clamor.

“Look, if I run, I just make myself look guilty,” Stiles says. “If I stay where I am, I’ll get turned into paste. But if I can get a chance to tell my side of the story – ”

“They’ll kill you before you walk in the door, are you _nuts_?” Isaac asks.

“I’ll need an escort,” Stiles agrees. “Someone who can be trusted.”

“Don’t look at me,” Chris says. “Too many of them believe I’ve been compromised.”

Stiles lets out a breath. “Can you get me in touch with Mikael Aronsson? Where are his hunting grounds?”

“North,” Chris says. “The Dakotas, Minnesota, that area. It’s a bad idea, Stiles. Mikael doesn’t follow the Code.”

“No, but he owes me a favor from when I saved Annika’s life,” Stiles says. “Tell him I’m calling it in and give him my number.”

Chris hesitates, then says, “I’ll make the call.”

The line goes dead.

“You are _not doing this_ ,” Scott immediately says.

“Jesus, I am so very open to better ideas,” Stiles says, “but I haven’t got a single one.”

“Do you trust this . . . Aronsson?” Ravinder asks.

Stiles makes a seesaw gesture with his hand. “He doesn’t follow the Code, but he’s generally pretty honorable. I can trust him to listen to my side of the story before he puts a bullet in my brain,” he adds, and all of his wolves growl. “I guess I trust him a lot like I trusted Chris Argent in the beginning. He’s not a friend or even really an ally, but he’s not an enemy. And he does take the debt he owes me pretty seriously.”

Boyd picks up his phone to hand it back to him and says, “Hey, you have a message.”

“Oh, shit,” Stiles says. They were outside of cell service for much of the previous evening, while they had been looking for any blank spots in Jackson’s magical senses. He hadn’t thought to check his phone when they had finally gotten back into range; he had just been too tired. He pulls up the voice mail, leaving the phone on speaker. His father’s voice comes over.

“Hey, you,” he says. “I’m guessing you’re either outside service or sleeping right now. Look, I found a lead. I was checking those names you sent me and I noticed two of them had been in Beacon Hills back in June.”

Stiles sighs. “This again . . .”

But his father keeps talking. “One of them was familiar, Ruben Gutierrez. I was pretty sure I had heard it before, so I ran a background check on him. Turns out that I’d actually met him. He was called in as a character witness at his brother’s trial. His brother is Luis Gutierrez – he’s one of the hunters who shot at you guys in the woods, and you got him put in prison. So call me crazy, but I’m thinking we may know who’s behind this.

“I’m running everything on him – phones, financials, et cetera – but from what I’ve gotten back so far, I think he’s gone dark. There’s no recent activity, anything in the last four months. He’s been preparing for this for a while. Watch your back, kiddo. Call me to let me know you’re okay.”

It’s the end of the message. Stiles ends the call without deleting it. “Well,” he says, “we know who we’re looking for. Four months ago – that’s about when you guys went up against the sorcerer pack, right?” he asks, and Ravinder nods. “So Gutierrez was one of the hunters sent to find them. Somehow, we’ll probably never know how, he hooked up with Gabriel Khan and the two of them cooked up this plot. Khan gets you. Gutierrez gets me.”

“Christ, this is bad,” Scott says, his forehead wrinkling.

“We’re still not letting you go in alone,” Isaac says firmly.

Stiles shakes his head. “I won’t risk any of you,” he says. “If I go down, I’m not taking you with me. Scott, you’re in charge. Keep working with Jackson. Find the others.”

“You’re _not going alone_ ,” Boyd says.

“No, he will not be,” Ravinder says. To Stiles, he adds, “I will accompany you.” To the others, he says, “On my honor as a wolf of the Chandra pack, I will protect him, to the death if necessary.”

“I’ll go, too,” Yasmin says, with a nod. “We got you guys into this. It’s the least we can do.”

Stiles looks at them. “Can I stop you?” he asks, and they both shake their heads. “Okey dokey, then,” he says. He’s about to ask the pack if that’s acceptable when his phone rings again. A quick glance at the screen sees an unknown number with an area code he doesn’t recognize. “This will be Mikael,” he says, and picks up the phone professionally. “Stilinski.”

As expected, the voice at the other end is familiar. “This is Mikael Aronsson.”

“Hey,” Stiles says, “thanks for calling me. Chris has brought you up to date?”

“Yes,” Mikael says, “and I think you’re insane.”

“You already thought that,” Stiles says.

“There are degrees. You’re walking into certain death.”

“No, I’m not,” Stiles says, “because _you_ are going to escort me, say I turned myself in of my own volition, and have convinced you that I at least deserve to tell my own side of the story.”

The silence on the other end of the phone is extremely loud.

“Do you believe I killed them?” Stiles asks.

“No,” Mikael says, at length. “Not that I don’t believe you’re capable – just that I think you would have done a better job at hiding your involvement.”

“And see, that’s the kind of ringing endorsement that I need,” Stiles says.

Another long silence. “How secure is your current location?”

“I’ve probably got a few hours here, but I wouldn’t bet more than that.”

“Hang on.” The silence stretches out into minutes. “There’s a park in Hood River called Rotary Park. I’ll meet you there. I’m in Montana right now, but there’s an airfield not too far away. I can be there by noon.”

“Okay. I’ll wait for you there.”

Stiles hangs up and lets out a breath. “I have to call my dad,” he finally says. “I’m going to go do that from the bedroom,” he adds. They’ll still be able to hear, but it will give him some modicum of privacy. “You guys eat some breakfast while I do that.”

“You should eat, too,” Scott says.

“I’ll eat on the road.” Stiles picks up his phone and heads for the bedroom. He dials his father’s number and glances at his watch. It’s just past eight thirty in the morning, and he knows that his father was up late, because the message had been left at about one AM. Not surprisingly, his father is gruff and sleepy when he picks up. But he wakes up quickly enough when Stiles says hello and starts to give him a summary of what’s happening.

“Jesus,” Stilinski says. “If it isn’t one thing, it’s another.”

“No shit,” Stiles says. It’s a mark of how much they’ve been through that his father isn’t already saying he’s buying a plane ticket. Part of that, Stiles thinks, is because his father is a police officer. He’s fair-minded, and he expects others to have the same commitment to justice. To Sheriff Stilinski, someone turning themselves in and saying ‘I didn’t commit this crime but I can understand how it looks like I did’ would gain them major brownie points. Stiles wishes he had any confidence at all that it will have the same response from the hunters.

“What can I do?” Stilinski asks.

“I’m flying blind up here. I need as much information as you can get me on the murders. Both the one at the hotel and whatever happened with the alpha pack hunters. It wasn’t too far from here, although I don’t know where exactly.”

Stilinski huffs out a breath. “I don’t have a good excuse to look interested.”

“I know,” Stiles says. “Just get me what you can.”

“Will do. Anything else?”

Stiles lets out a breath. “Mac was supposed to be home tomorrow, and I’m starting to seriously doubt this will get resolved that quickly.” He’s kicking himself now for not forcing the teenager, as reluctant as she was, to come clean with her parents. “I don’t know what to do about it.”

There’s a long pause, and Stiles can just see the way his father is rubbing a weary hand over his face. “Not much we can do,” he says. “Presumably, when she doesn’t come home and when they can’t reach her, they’ll file a missing persons report. I’ll pretend to look for her and then when you rescue her, you can call them and concoct some story.”

Stiles appreciates that his father has said ‘when’ and not ‘if’. “Okay. I’ll be in touch.”

He gets dressed and goes back out to the kitchen. The wolves have eaten and are getting suited up. “Okay, guys,” he says, “I want you to stay with Jackson, call me the instant you find anything. I would go with you for the first couple hours but I don’t want to leave cell service in case my father calls or there’s some sort of problem with the local hunters. When Mikael picks me up, I’m going to turn my phone off, so don’t panic if I don’t answer.” He turns to Scott. “If you find something and you think you can get the others without taking unnecessary risks, or even if there will be risks but the setup looks temporary and you’re worried they might be moved, go for it.”

Scott nods and gives his shoulder a squeeze. “Count on it.”

Stiles lets out a breath. “Okay, friends and neighbors,” he says, “let’s get moving.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> favorite chapter alert ^_^

 

They’ve got a few hours, so Stiles distracts himself by baking, and yes, cleaning and doing laundry. The tiny cabin is starting to smell a little rank, to be honest, from all the people that have been crammed into it. He doesn’t want to leave it in bad shape for when the owners eventually return. In fact, he’s thinking about buying a bottle of wine or something and sticking it in their fridge as a thank you present.

His father calls just as he’s getting ready to leave, so he lets Ravinder drive the Jeep while he gets an update.

“Okay, so here’s the scoop,” Sheriff Stilinski says. “I’ve talked to the local cops about the murders. I had some luck in that three out of the five victims were in Beacon Hills back in June. I made it sound like I thought they might have met their murderer here. As it turns out, the four hunters who died at their campsite weren’t being considered a murder. Just an animal attack. So, well, I told them that a few years ago, there had been a string or murders here that looked very similar.”

“You made Peter Hale their chief suspect?” Stiles asks, almost amused.

“Well, it’s not like they can arrest him,” Stilinski says, sounding a little chagrined. “And since his body was never found, he was never officially declared dead. So yeah. I mean, there are obvious differences, like the fact that Peter only ever killed one person at a time, but it at least gave me a legitimate reason to be interested in the case.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. “So what’ve you got, then?”

“Well, I’ve got all the files from the murder at the hotel. If you want my honest opinion, that’s where he’s more likely to have slipped up. It’s the only thing so far that he’s actually done _himself_. You separated that hunter from the others and so Gutierrez had to get his hands dirty to take care of it. But for a crime scene, it’s pretty clean. Obviously, forensics won’t have their final reports for a while.”

“Ugh,” Stiles says.

“Yeah,” Stilinski says. “If we’re lucky, he left a fingerprint somewhere, and we can match that to the one at the house where you guys got attacked. But I won’t know that until some time tomorrow, probably. As for the other hunters, since that wasn’t being treated as a murder until I called, so far I have nothing.”

“Great,” Stiles says, rubbing a hand over his face.

“But look, from what you’ve told me, we have one pretty solid lead,” Stilinski says. “You said the hunter at the hotel told you that their leader got a call from someone who told them where to go. That must have been Gutierrez, right?”

“Yeah, but that won’t get me very far with the hunters,” Stiles says.

“No, but the number will be in her phone, so when they pull her phone records, we’ll be able to get it. Can’t you do some computer witchery that is completely illegal and therefore I know nothing about and please don’t tell me, to find the owner of the phone?”

“Well, fuck me, yes I can,” Stiles says. “Damn, that brings me back to the old days. That’s how we found out Peter was the alpha.”

“Exactly,” his father says. “I’ll get you that number as soon as I can. I couldn’t think of a way to tell them to check her cell phone, though, so I’ll have to wait until they order her phone records pulled.”

“You are the _best_ , Dad,” Stiles says. “I mean that. You are the detective that I want to be when I grow up.”

“Oh, kid,” Stilinski says, “you keep dreaming.”

They both share a little laugh. It’s not entirely funny, but it makes Stiles feel better. He says goodbye and hangs up. Ravinder looks over at him. “You have made progress?”

“Well, we’ve had some ideas, which is about ten miles ahead of where we were,” Stiles says. “My dad is the best detective I know. If anyone can get this shit sorted out, it’s him.”

They only have to wait at the park for about five minutes before Mikael arrives. He comes by himself, wearing dark cargo pants, an olive green T-shirt, and a long, dark overcoat. It’s sunny, despite the cold, but he takes off his sunglasses as he approaches so Stiles can see his eyes. Then his gaze flicks to Ravinder and Yasmin, who stand up when Stiles does, staying a step behind him.

“Stiles,” he says, his tone civil but hardly friendly.

Stiles shakes his hand. “Mikael, this is Ravinder Chandrasekhar and Yasmin Ortega. They’re coming along.”

Mikael obviously recognizes the names. He huffs out a breath and says, “I can’t begin to list all the ways that’s a bad idea.”

“Well, I can’t begin to list all the ways that my pack wasn’t going to let me go by myself,” Stiles says, “so we’re going to have to work with it. What are we dealing with here?”

“It’s not good,” Mikael says, somewhat grim faced. “The woman who runs things around here, Stella Jones, is _not_ a fan of the little movement you’ve started. She lost a daughter in a werewolf attack a few years ago. And she’s not someone I really know well, so although my word carries weight, I can’t really talk to her on a personal level.”

Stiles sighs. “Okay. How many hunters are we talking about?”

“Probably a couple dozen. Everyone in the area started heading this way when the news started going around.” Mikael shakes his head a little and says, “They’re an inch away from mob mentality. You’re not going to have much wiggle room. Why don’t you tell me what’s actually going on, and we’ll start from there?”

“Okay,” Stiles says, and starts with the attack on the alpha pack itself. Mikael frowns slightly when he details the incident with the monkeys and what happened at the hotel. “Now, I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty who’s pulling the strings here,” Stiles says, “but so far the arrows are pointing to a guy named Ruben Gutierrez. Do you know him?”

“Of course,” Mikael says. His eyebrows go up, but then he nods. “Yes, he’s a likely enough suspect.”

“Know him that well, do you?” Stiles asks. “Apparently I put his brother in prison.”

“Gutierrez comes from a big hunting family down in New Mexico and Arizona,” Mikael says. “I’ve never really gotten along with any of them, but I’ve actually worked with him several times. He tends to travel rather than stick to his own territory, and so do I, so we’ve run into each other on a few occasions. His family is very . . . practical.” He shakes his head. “Although so am I, and so are you. But they take it to extremes. They’d rather shoot first and ask questions later. I had heard one of them was one of the alpha pack hunters who got arrested, but frankly didn’t care about which one. Ruben, though. You stepped on his pride.”

Stiles blinks. “What, I did? When?”

“At the Conclave. You don’t remember?”

“Dude, I stepped on a _lot_ of toes at that Conclave, and most of them belonged to people I was never formally introduced to.”

“Well, you’ll remember Ruben. You called him an asshole in front of everyone.”

Stiles groans. “ _That_ jerk? Oh, fuck me.”

“You’ve met him?” Ravinder asks.

“After everything went to shit at the Conclave, Chris and I had to get up and convince everyone that they didn’t need to start grabbing pitchforks and stage a riot, this one guy kept hammering at me, saying werewolves were animals and couldn’t be trusted, blah, blah, blah,” Stiles says. He rubs a hand over his face. “Of course. He asked about the alpha pack hunters, how Chris could have allowed that to happen. I bet he didn’t like the answer very much.”

“No,” Mikael says, “and I’m willing to bet that Allison is his target as much as you are. Everyone knows how much Chris treasures his daughter.”

Stiles is suddenly even more glad that he hadn’t told Chris that Allison had been captured. “Yeah, well,” he says, “as good a suspect as he is, I still don’t have any actual _proof_ that he’s done anything. Just a lot of circumstantial evidence. He was one of the hunters who went after Khan’s pack in the first place, so that’s probably how they hooked up. And according to my dad, his real identity has been dark since then. He’s been using a fake while he sets all this up.”

Mikael nods slowly. “But you’re right. That won’t be enough.”

“There was one fingerprint in the house where the monkeys came from,” Stiles says. “Neither Gutierrez nor Khan have fingerprints on file anywhere. But it can be checked against Gutierrez, if, you know, you guys will twist his arm into it. And then there’s the phone call that was made to Gina. We might be able to trace that back to him, too.”

“Might,” Mikael says, and shakes his head. “Well, no time like the present.” He turns to Ravinder and Yasmin. “Nobody will recognize you if you keep your mouths shut and stay behind me. They’ll assume you’re with me. But.” He hesitates. “I’m not exactly comfortable bringing a couple of alpha werewolves into a hunter stronghold for a huge variety of reasons. I only have your word that you won’t start killing people.”

“Stiles is not going without us,” Ravinder says, “and you are the ones whose word cannot be trusted.”

Yasmin winces. “Uh, Ravinder’s formidable lack of tact aside, I _could_ point out that for the last ten years, y’all have been gunning for us and all we’ve ever done is evade. We don’t kill the hunters unless we’re really in immediate danger, like when Justin killed Tyrone.”

Mikael’s eyes narrow, but then he nods. “I’m just saying. Let’s try to make sure everyone keeps their tempers.” He looks back to Stiles. “I saw the way you spoke to the elders at the Conclave. That won’t fly here. Back then you were on your own ground and you had allies at your back. For God’s sake, keep a civil tongue in your head or Stella will rip it out.”

Stiles nods. “I can behave,” he says.

“Then let’s get moving,” Mikael says. He gestures over to the – of course – dark SUV that he’s driving. Stiles thinks about commentary but then decides against it. He gets in the front, and Mikael gets behind the wheel. They drive in silence for about twenty minutes, before pulling into the parking lot of an elementary school.

“Wow, really?” Stiles asks.

Mikael gives him an irritated look. “Would you prefer an isolated prison in the woods somewhere?” he asks. “There has to be room for everyone. Stella’s brother is the assistant principal here. Everyone’s on Christmas break right now.”

“Fair,” Stiles says. He takes several deep breaths to steady himself, to focus, and then nods and gets out of the car. Mikael walks around the school to a side entrance that leads into the gymnasium. Stiles follows. Yasmin and Ravinder come behind him, and at his instruction they both take one of his elbows so it looks like they’re hunters ‘escorting’ him and making sure he doesn’t try anything.

Inside is a gathering of about twenty people. They’re all adults, mostly middle-aged with a few older. They’re dressed in hunter gear, and they go completely silent when Mikael comes in with the others behind him. Every eye in the room immediately fixes on Stiles, and it takes effort not to make a run for it. The looks on their faces scream aggressive, mindless hatred.

He lets Mikael talk. The tall hunter seeks out the gaze of a hard-looking woman with dark skin and lines around her eyes. Her black hair is cropped extremely short, and when she moves, Stiles can see her shoulder holster. But she greets Mikael with civility. “This is him?” she asks, gesturing to Stiles.

Mikael nods. “This is Stiles. Stiles, Stella Jones.”

“Nice to meet you, ma’m,” Stiles says, politely.

Stella narrows her eyes at him. “Can’t say the same,” she says. “I’ve got five dead hunters on my territory, Stiles. You care to explain that?”

Stiles nods. “Simply put, I’m being framed.”

“Well,” Stella says, “whoever’s framing you is doing a damned good job, because you look guilty as hell.”

“Yes, I absolutely agree,” Stiles says, although he’s straining to keep a civil tone. “I understand that I had a serious grudge against one of the hunters who was killed. But I think you’ll find, if you check with other hunters that I’ve dealt with, that I’ve never killed a hunter or even harmed one on my territory.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Stella says.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, “and I won’t lie. If I had _known_ Loesch was out of prison – which I did _not_ – I would’ve been really fucking tempted to kill him. I will remind you that he attempted to murder my father, who is one hundred percent human and was only doing his _job_ at the time that Gerard Argent decided he needed to die. Would I have killed Loesch? I don’t know. Maybe that’s the sort of thing a person can only know about themselves when they get there. But I had no reason to kill the others.”

“Then it was just coincidence that they died in a wolf attack,” Stella says sarcastically.

“No, it wasn’t a coincidence at all,” Stiles says. “Like I said: I’m being framed.”

“And I’m sure you know exactly who’s doing it.”

“I have my suspicions,” Stiles says, “but I’d prefer not to name names.”

Mikael gives him a somewhat skeptical look at this. Stella’s eyes narrow.

“If I’m wrong,” Stiles continues, “I will be tarnishing the reputation of someone who is a good hunter. I really don’t want to do that. Nor do I want to give any hunter a reason to come after me. Once I can prove it, I’ll be happy to tell you who killed the hunters and set me up. But I’m not implicating anyone until I have solid proof.”

A murmur goes through the room at this, and Stiles guesses he’s actually gained some respect from the hunters at this. They’re close, insular in the same way a pack is insular. Even if they don’t know each other, they look out for each other.

“There is someone who had a valid reason to hate me,” Stiles says, “who was sent to hunt the pack of werewolf sorcerers about six months ago. From what’s happened so far, I suspect that he and the former lupa of that pack came to an agreement to put this together. This hunter could have easily found out about my possible connection with Loesch, and he would have known Loesch was one of the alpha pack hunters. So, attack the alpha pack, bring me in to assist, and that’s two birds with one stone. This sorcerer has attacked us twice with constructs – once insectoid, once monkeys. I’m wagering that a pack of wolves would not have posed a huge challenge for him.”

“He hated you enough to kill five of his fellow hunters in cold blood?” one of the other hunters asks, eyes narrowing.

“Pride and hubris are terrible things,” Stiles says.

“What the hell reason do we have to believe you?” someone else calls out.

Stiles lets out a breath. “I came here of my own volition. I’m unarmed, I’m not offering you a challenge. I have a history of peaceful interaction with hunters, even helping out when other monsters are in town.”

“Yeah, and how much of that is a ruse?” Stella asks, scowling. “To get hunters to let their guard down around you for just this reason?”

“None of it,” Stiles says. “I happen to not like monsters on my territory, and Chris Argent is really good at helping me kill them. So we work together when it comes up. But not only that, even when hunters have directly struck at my pack – both the alpha pack hunters who shot at us during my alpha trial and the elders when they released a dangerous monster on my territory – I have never raised a hand in violence in return.”

Several of them squirm at this. Stiles hears someone say, “He’s got a point,” in a low voice.

“What do you think?” Stella asks Mikael, staring hard at him.

Mikael hesitates, but speaks in a firm tone. “I believe him. If it was just Loesch that was dead, I could believe it was Stiles – but not all of them. And frankly, I think he’s too smart to have killed Springman in the hotel after they got it in one of the alpha pack’s names. That was a huge risk that he had no reason to take. I know that they’ve got several false identities among them.”

More shifting, more muttering.

“Furthermore,” Mikael says, “if he’s right, and there _is_ a traitor in our midst, willing to kill his brothers-in-arms for the sake of his own pride, then I’d think that takes priority over dealing with him.”

“Has he told you who he suspects?” Stella asks.

“He has,” Mikael says.

“And you believe it’s possible?”

“I do,” Mikael replies.

Stella chews on her lower lip for a few moments. She gestures to two or three of the others, including Mikael, and says, “Let’s talk privately.” To the others, she says, “If he tries to run, kill him.”

Stiles thinks about commenting that it would have been pretty stupid to show up voluntarily if he only planned on running away after telling his side of the story, but decides against it. Things are going pretty well, all things considered, and he doesn’t want to start anything he can’t finish. Yasmin still has a hold on his elbow, tight enough that it looks restraining but feels comforting.

Minutes drag on, and Stiles starts to shift uncomfortably. He has things he needs to _do_ , and waiting is driving him nuts. He was never very good at it to start with. By the time the others come back, he’s ready to climb the walls. The grim expression on Mikael’s face doesn’t help his nerves. He can feel Ravinder and Yasmin tense behind him, going into fight-or-flight mode. He hopes they can keep it together and not betray themselves as wolves unless shit really hits the fan.

“We’re prepared to offer you a compromise,” Stella says, and Stiles nods. “We can’t just let you go. Not with this much evidence stacked against you. But we’ll give you three days to find proof that this mystery hunter with a grudge is framing you.” She gestures to one of her companions, a balding, mousy looking man who’s several inches shorter than she is. “To ensure that you don’t just make a run for it, Eli is going to put a spell on you.”

“What sort of spell?” Stiles asks, although it seems pretty reasonable so far, something he can work with. “Like, a tracking spell?”

“Similar,” Eli says, and there’s a glint of malice in his gaze as he says, “The spell will give you three days to find whatever evidence you can and return here. Then I’ll remove it. If it’s not removed within three days, it will kill you.”

“Uh,” Stiles says. “That seems a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

“It’s efficient,” Stella says brusquely. “If you don’t come back, we don’t have to go to the trouble of hunting you down and killing your ass.”

Stiles narrows his eyes. He can feel the alphas tensing further, readying for his word that he’s not going to allow this, that they’ll have to fight their way out.

“Fine,” he says, “but make it two days. School starts on January second and I need to be back in Beacon Hills by then anyway.”

There’s a moment of completely shocked silence at this casual remark.

“But,” he says, “I will have your word that if I can prove my innocence, you _will_ remove it. You will swear to that on your own power before you lay a single finger on me, magical or otherwise, and trust me, I know how to make a magical oath binding. I _will_ know if you’re faking it.”

Eli’s mouth curves into a smile. “Two days it is,” he says. He makes a sweeping gesture with one hand, into a circle around himself, and proceeds to swear the oath. He does it properly. Stiles has no complaints. “Give me your arm,” he says, so Stiles does. Then Eli adds, “On second thought, we’d better get you a chair.”

One of the other hunters grabs two from a corner of the gymnasium. Stiles sits down across from Eli and extends his left arm. “Left okay?” he asks.

“Fine,” Eli says. He takes out a piece of chalk and draws a circle on the floor around them. The crowd around them has gone silent. Before he closes the circle, Eli says, “Ah, Mikael. Come inside the circle. I might need you to hold him down.”

“Wait, what?” Stiles asks, but then the circle is closed and Mikael is standing behind him with his hands on his shoulders. “You guys are real charmers, you know that?”

Eli just smirks at him. Then he reaches out and taps Stiles on the chest, right where the protection spell he wears is hidden underneath his shirt. “You’ll need to take that off.”

“Of course I will,” Stiles mutters. He hesitates for a brief moment, but then pulls the leather cord over his head and hands the necklace to Mikael, who puts it in one of the many pockets of his cargo pants.

“Hold still,” Eli says, and starts drawing on the inside of his left forearm. Despite the fact that he’s only using a piece of pale blue chalk, dark lines start to spring out from the marks immediately. They come with a wave of crimson pain. Stiles grits his teeth against it. He’s survived worse. He’s spent two days in the trunk of a car, he’s been sliced up by werewolf claws and had his shoulder dislocated by werewolf jaws, his leg has been burned by a flaming whip, he’s been poisoned by wolfsbane. He can survive this, and he’ll do it without a word or a flinch.

The pain seems to go on forever. He doesn’t know how long it takes. By the end his entire body is trembling and tears have soaked his cheeks, dripping off the end of his chin. But he hasn’t made a sound, and Mikael’s hands have never done anything other than apply some gentle pressure, more of a reassurance than a restraint.

“It’s done,” Eli says, and smiles. He stands up and smudges the chalk line with his toe. Stiles stands up and nearly falls. Mikael’s hand underneath his elbow keeps him on his feet. He looks down at his arm and sees that the lines have coalesced into what looks like a tattoo of an hourglass. As he watches, a tiny grain of sand drifts downward. The mark hurts like crazy, almost as bad as a burn.

“You have forty-eight hours,” Stella says.

“I’ll call you before then,” Stiles says, trying to inject some confidence in his voice, and wobbles towards the doorway. Ravinder and Yasmin take up their positions on either side of him again. He walks out the door and listens as it closes and latches beside him. Then he collapses to his knees and shoves the arm into a pile of snow, strangling back a howl of pain and transforming it into a whimper.

“Jesus,” Yasmin says, trying to help him down. “Easy, Stiles, easy.”

“Oh, fuck,” Stiles chokes out. “Fuck that hurts like a bitch.”

“Allow me to – ” Ravinder lays a hand over the mark. Stiles sees the veins in his hand darken as he draws the pain out of it. For one brief, glorious moment, the pain fades to a manageable level. But then Ravinder’s veins go even darker and the pain redoubles. He howls despite himself, and Yasmin claps a hand over his mouth to keep him from drawing too much attention.

“Don’t do that again,” Stiles gasps out at Ravinder, and the alpha nods, looking shaken. “Fucking _sorcerers_ , I fucking _hate sorcerers_ , fuck my life.”

Between the two of them, they get him on his feet and around the school, and into the passenger seat of the car.

“What do we do next?” Mikael asks.

Stiles turns to him with eyes that shine crimson despite all effort to the contrary, and a snarl rises unbidden to his lips. He bares his teeth at Mikael and says, “ _We_ do not do anything, you useless son of a bitch. I don’t want any help from you.”

Mikael’s jaw tightens. “I did what I could for you. Everyone admitted that you were probably innocent, but half of them wanted to just kill you anyway. Including Stella. I convinced them that you were the best chance we had of finding the traitor, so they spared your life, and if you’ll recall, I _told_ you that this was a stupid idea.”

Stiles looks away and rubs one shaking hand over his face. “Drive me back to Hood River and drop me off. I’ll call you when I have the proof I need.”

“Fine,” Mikael says, and the drive passes in silence.

Stiles checks his messages to find that he has a couple of texts from Scott about all the nothing they’re finding. There’s nothing from his father. He calls up Scott and they agree to rendezvous but Stiles texts him where, not wanting Mikael to hear. When Mikael drops them off at the park, Stiles gets out of his car and then turns around to address him before leaving. “You know,” he says, “if it’s so difficult for you guys to find yourselves cast in the role of the villain, maybe you should _stop acting that way_.” With that, he slams the door hard enough to shake the windows. It’s petty, but it makes him feel better.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic needs dramatic music....

 

The others are waiting at a small café in Hood River. Mei is looking better, less pale and steady on her feet, and Scott tells Stiles that she and Ethan agreed to wait at the diner while the rest of them searched. The rest of them are clearly exhausted, which doesn’t bode well, being in that it’s barely three o’clock in the afternoon. The pain in Stiles’ arm has faded to a dull throbbing. He’s tired and frustrated and they don’t look a lot happier. “How’d it go?” he asks.

“Fucking _nothing_ ,” Jackson snaps at him.

“Nothing _yet_ ,” Scott says firmly. “We’ve still got about three square miles left to go.” He gives Stiles a cautious look, like he’s thinking about telling him to sit down but not quite sure he dares. “How are things on your end?”

“Well, I’m still breathing,” Stiles says, “and I’ve been given two days by the powers that be to find proof that I’m innocent. Or really, proof that someone else is guilty.”

“Or what?” Scott asks, in a tone that’s half confusion, half suspicion.

“They put this spell on me,” Stiles says, extending his arm and rolling the sleeve up so they can see the hourglass that’s been drawn onto his skin.

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Jackson says, flinching away violently.

Scott’s jaw tightens. “And what does that do?” he asks. He clearly doesn’t want to hear any bullshit, and he’s not oblivious to Jackson’s reaction. Stiles isn’t oblivious to it either; he’s blinking at the other teenager with some mild surprise.

“It’s like one of those . . . it’s kinda like a time bomb,” Stiles says, and several people start growling. “You know, like, did you see that movie where people put a bomb on a pizza delivery guy and . . . never mind, the point is, if I don’t have it taken off within the next two days, I’ll explode. Or I will. Or something.”

Scott is quiet for a moment, his hands opening and closing into fists as he tries to check his temper. “What the actual fuck.”

“It’s fine, two days should be more than enough time,” Stiles reassures him.

“It’s _not_ fine, Stiles!” Scott shouts. “How the hell do you figure it’s ‘fine’? They’ve put a God damned time limit on your _life_. That’s not _fine_.”

Stiles pushes both hands through his hair and says, “Look, I can sort of see why they didn’t just want to let me go without a leash.”

“What, like a GPS anklet for someone on probation or something?” Scott’s tone is almost reasonable.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Stiles says.

“No,” Scott snaps. His hand cuts sideways between them. “It’s not like that at all. Do you know why? Because if you go out of bounds with a GPS tracker, they find you and ask you why you did that. You get to tell your side of the story. Maybe you were carjacked. Maybe you got lost. Maybe you were an idiot. If they don’t like your answer, you go back to jail. But they don’t _execute_ you. So no, it isn’t the same. Why are you swallowing this like it’s okay?”

“What the fuck other choice do I _have_?” Stiles suddenly shouts. “I can’t stop to dwell on how massively unfair it is or how fucking terrified I should be, okay? I have _work_ to do!”

Scott deflates a little, the anger leaking away, and just grabs Stiles and pulls him into an embrace. “Well, at least it isn’t some weird guilt trip,” he mutters, but then he just holds him tightly.

Stiles hugs back just as hard, concentrating on his breathing. He can’t panic. There’s too much to do. “Look, if you had been there, you would have . . . Jesus, I was lucky to get out of there alive.” He’s trembling now, from delayed fear and adrenaline.

Scott just stays there, holding Stiles up, clearly not planning to let go any time soon. “Did anyone try to defend you or look out for you?”

“Well, Mikael did what I asked him to do,” Stiles says. “He got me in there alive, made everyone shut up so I could explain what I thought was going on, and when asked, told the mob that he believed me.”

“Only when asked?” Scott’s tone hardens again. “Gee, how kind of him.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t thrilled with him either,” Stiles says. “You’ll notice he wasn’t invited along on this next part of the tour. But apparently – according to him anyway – the spell was a compromise between people who thought I should be considered innocent until proven guilty and the people who said ‘who cares if he’s innocent, he walked in the door so off with his head’.”

Scott has to force himself to remain calm. “I’m not sure who I want to sic on them more. There are so many options . . .”

“Me,” Stiles says, and at this he smiles a little. “We’re siccing me on them. To be fair, the look on the dude’s face when he was all ostentatiously telling me about how in their great mercy they would grant me three days and I said, ‘eh, make it two, school starts Monday’ was pretty fucking hilarious.”

“God, Stiles, you’re such a jackass,” Scott says, but he laughs, letting Stiles go. He looks over at Jackson, then gestures to the tattoo. “Can you do anything about that?”

“Jesus _fuck_ no,” Jackson snaps. “I don’t want to go anywhere near that thing.”

It looks for a moment like Scott might have something else to say about that, but then he backs off. “Okay. Well, let’s get moving again, then.”

“Three square miles left, you said?” Stiles asks, and Scott nods. “We should be able to cover that before the sun goes down.”

They load into the cars and head back out into the woods. There’s a campsite where they can park their cars. Stiles shares out the results of his morning’s work by giving muffins to everyone. Jackson looks at him like he’s from another planet, then steals a second one when he thinks Stiles won’t notice.

While they walk, Stiles gives the others a more detailed version of what happened with the hunters and what his father is currently working on. Danny laughs a little when he brings up the incident years past where he had used a phone number to track down the alpha who had turned Scott. “Dude, I never believed that was your cousin,” he says.

“You did, you _totally_ did,” Stiles says.

“Yeah, because the name Miguel is so _Polish_ ,” Danny retorts.

“Shut up,” Jackson snaps suddenly, going taut and still. Wilma stops beside him, her ceaselessly-wagging tail finally still, looking up at him with concern. He lets out a breath, eyes drifting shut. “I think . . .” He starts off again at a rapid clip. Stiles can see the trees thinning out ahead of them. They come out into a rough clearing full of burned tree stumps and rocks.

“Well, shit, nobody’s being held captive here,” Isaac says, kicking a rock and sending it sailing.

Jackson kneels down and touches his hand to the ground. Danny and Stiles are both studying him as he brushes one hand through the dirt. “There was a _lot_ of magic done here,” Jackson says. He walks along what looks like a small trench. Then he looks up. “I need to get up higher.”

“I’ll take you,” Danny says. Jackson scowls but nods. He gives everyone a ‘not one fucking word’ look as Danny kneels down so Jackson can climb onto his back.

“Wilma, stay,” he calls out, as Danny starts climbing one of the trees on the edge of the clearing. The athletic werewolf has no problem scaling the tall pine. “It’s a circle,” Jackson calls down to them.

Stiles looks at Scott. “Get me up there,” he says. He’s too tired to do it himself, he thinks. And his arm hurts too much. Every now and then, the hourglass sends shivers of pain up through his elbow and shoulder. Scott nods and wordlessly kneels so Stiles can grab hold. Then he starts up the tree. Once they’re up higher, Stiles can see the circle drawn in the dirt, and the symbols that surround it. “What do they mean?” he asks, taking his phone out to carefully take some pictures.

“Can we have this chat when I’m _not_ fucking sixty feet in the air?” Jackson snaps back.

Stiles rolls his eyes, but nods at Danny, and both wolves start back down. “What’s it look like?” Yasmin asks, a little breathless with worry.

“It’s a . . . fuck, I don’t know the official term for it,” Jackson says, and waves a hand at them to indicate that it’s not important. “To make it simple, anyone put in that circle would lose consciousness. It looks pretty powerful. This Khan guy doesn’t fuck around.”

“So the monkeys brought them here and dumped them in the circle, and then what?” Ethan asks.

“Then Khan could do whatever the hell he wanted with them,” Jackson says. “Do any additional bindings – like the ones that have fucked up the pack bond, the ones that are keeping my magic from finding them – and probably tie ‘em up so he could then throw them in the back of his truck or whatever.”

“So they’re not here,” Stiles says flatly, “and they never were here long. This was just a pit stop.”

“Yeah,” Jackson says. Wilma gives a whine, and he absently scratches behind her ears.

“Fuck.” Stiles feels panic bubbling in his throat again. He tries to think of something rational to say. “ _Fuck_ ,” is what comes out.

Scott squeezes his elbow and turns to Jackson. “There must be something you can work with here.”

Jackson’s scowl deepens. “You think, McCall? What is it you think I can do? Deaton sent me here to do _one_ spell: a fucking tracking spell. I can’t do fuckall else because my magic is bound, and wait, let me think, whose idea was that?”

“You say that like we didn’t have pretty valid reasons – ” Isaac says, and although his tone is nonchalant, his body vibrates with tension.

Danny pushes between the two of them. “Hey, let’s all take a breath,” he says.

Ravinder is looking carefully at Stiles. “Are you unwell?” he asks.

Stiles pushes away from Scott and staggers away a few steps. He doesn’t even feel sick until he realizes he’s on his hands and knees in the dirt, puking up everything he had eaten. Scott kneels down on one side of him, but Stiles pushes him away again, blindly, although it doesn’t have much effect. “Hey, hey, take it easy,” Scott says.

“I’m okay,” Stiles says hoarsely. “Just got – dizzy for a minute.” He feels hot in his winter clothes, despite the freezing temperatures, and eases the zipper of his coat down a few inches.

“We’re going to figure this out,” Scott says, his voice full of confidence that Stiles doubts he actually feels. “And hey, don’t count the others out. They’re probably working up an awesome escape plan even as we speak.”

Stiles swallows and nods, letting Scott help him up. Yasmin offers him a bottle of water, and he takes a sip. “It’s just so fucking stupid, you know? Like . . . what kind of asshole starts murdering people because I made him look bad at the Conclave?”

“This kind, apparently,” Boyd says. Stiles sighs and nods.

“C’mon, I want to get back to a place with cell service so I can check in with my dad,” he says.

“Then you should try to get some sleep,” Scott says, and returns Stiles’ skeptical look with one of his own. “What? I know you’ve barely slept for the past three days. You look wrecked, man. And we’re going to need you at your best.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, pushing both hands through his hair. But he already knows he isn’t going to sleep. Not without Derek. If he even tries, he’ll only wake up screaming with nightmares. He’ll just have to soldier on somehow. “Well, we’ve got the time, so I guess one thing we can do is try to dig up as much information on Ruben Gutierrez as we can. Never know what’ll come in handy.”

They drive back to the cabin. Stiles sends e-mails to all his contacts to ask about Ruben, including the hunters he knows, Sam Argent and Wednesday Arnelle. Hunters travel a lot, so there’s no reason they might not have met him at some point. Anything might help.

His father calls about an hour later. “Nothing at the hotel,” he says, and Stiles groans. “Well, you wouldn’t have stopped there to question the guy if they had tons of security cameras and such,” Stilinski points out, and Stiles agrees with a sigh. “So, I went to go visit Luis Gutierrez at the prison,” he continues.

“You did?” Stiles asks, a little surprised.

“Yeah, I wanted to see if he had any way of getting in touch with his brother in times of crisis, like a secret drop or something like that,” Stilinski says. “It was worth a try. Stood to reason that they might need to get in touch with each other even if one of them was flying under the radar for whatever reason.”

“But I take it from the fact that you didn’t open with this that it didn’t get you anywhere,” Stiles says.

“Not as such,” Sheriff Stilinski says. “But I did find one thing interesting. Luis seemed honestly surprised that his brother was going on this crusade with him. I checked the logs. Our pal Ruben hasn’t been to visit Luis once. They don’t seem close.”

“Then this really is all about his fucking pride,” Stiles says. “He’ll use family as an excuse, but that’s all it is.” He lets out a breath. “Yeah, I can use that. If I can ever _get_ to him.”

“You will,” his father says. He pauses. “Look, kid, what’s your priority here?”

It takes Stiles a minute to think about it and figure out what his father means. He’s sore and his head aches and everything just seems slow and sluggish. “Finding the others,” he says. “If I can’t prove Ruben’s guilt, so be it. Once I have the others back, I can run if I have to.” He doesn’t mention the spell. There’s no reason to put his father on edge.

“Okay. That’s what I’ll focus on, then. As for you – when was the last time you slept?”

“Christmas,” Stiles says, with a snort.

“Get some rest, then. I mean it.”

Stiles gives a sigh. “I’ll try.”

“Okay. I’ll call you as soon as I have something.”

They say their goodbyes and hang up. Stiles gets up and starts checking the perimeter and the surveillance out of habit. He doesn’t put it past Stella or any of her guys to decide to just come take him out while they have the chance. He runs into Jackson, playing fetch with Wilma, looking tired and drawn. “You okay?”

Jackson glowers at him. “Let’s assume for a moment that I’m not. Why the hell would I want to talk to you?”

Stiles sighs. “Just figured I’d ask, man.”

Jackson heaves the stick again. “I still haven’t told her,” he says abruptly.

“Still haven’t told who what?” Stiles asks, feeling unbearably slow on the uptake.

“Lydia,” Jackson snaps at him. “I still haven’t apologized to her for the shit I pulled when I was using magic. And now she’s gone and I can’t fucking find her.”

“We will,” Stiles says.

“Give me a break, man. You’re freaking out twice as bad as any of the rest of us. I don’t want to hear your bullshit.”

“Well, unfortunately, that bullshit is all I’ve got right now.” Stiles turns around and heads back into the cabin. He starts making dinner for everyone.

“Dude, let Boyd do that, you should get some rest,” Scott says.

Stiles takes a package of eggs from the refrigerator. He can make egg salad. That’s quick, easy, and filling. “I’ll be okay,” he says. “I wouldn’t sleep if I tried anyway.”

“There’s a gold star in it for you,” Scott says.

Stiles’ temper snaps. He throws the carton of eggs to the ground, and they splatter everywhere. “Do I fucking _look_ like I care about those stupid gold stars right now?”

Scott takes an involuntary step back, but then holds his ground. “Cuddles or violence?”

“Oh my God – violence,” Stiles says. Scott grabs him by the elbow and pulls him out of the house. They spend a solid half hour trying to kick the shit out of each other. Stiles suspects that Scott is going a little easier on him than normal, and then Isaac joins in so Scott can actually cut loose and get some of the tension out of his own system.

When they finally stagger inside, Boyd has made a bunch of pizzas that he found in the cabin’s freezer. They sit down and have a quiet dinner. Stiles isn’t really hungry, but he forces himself to eat. If he’s not going to sleep, he’ll need to keep his energy up somehow. His phone rings as he’s gnawing on the crust, and it’s his father’s name on the caller ID. “’Shup?” he asks through a mouthful.

“Glad to hear you’re eating,” his father greets him. “I’ve got that phone number for you.”

Stiles hastily swallows. “Oh, sweet.” He pushes back from the table and goes for a piece of paper. “Okay, let me have it.”

His father dictates the number to him and adds, “Police are going to track it down, too, most likely, but I didn’t want to look too interested and I know you can do that yourself.”

“Yeah, okay.” Stiles grabs another can of soda in lieu of a second piece of pizza. “Thanks, I’ll be in touch.”

He practically shoves the number at Danny. “Hit me.”

Danny nods, crams the last of his pizza into his mouth, and goes for his laptop. “May take a few,” he says.

“Yeah, I remember,” Stiles says. It had been a long, awkward hour or so in his bedroom while Derek tried on shirts and glowered and angrily closed books and pretended he didn’t speak English. The memory actually brings a slight smile to his lips. Back then, things had seemed pretty dire. They’ve been through a lot. They’ll make it through this, too. He decides to have a second slice of pizza.

The alphas fall asleep in a pile in the guest room not much later, even though it’s not particularly late. They’re all still wounded, and the day was a long one. The exception is Ethan, who decides to stay up with Danny, although before five minutes have passed he’s unconscious on the couch. Stiles helps Boyd wash the dishes and listens to the comforting noise of Danny typing and muttering to himself.

Finally, the typing stops. Stiles hears Danny let out a sigh. It doesn’t sound like a good sigh. Stiles has to take a minute to steel his nerves. “What?” he asks, walking into the other room. Another wave of dizziness washes over him. He hastily leans against the wall before anyone can notice. He’s fine, he tells himself. Just tired. Long day.

“It’s a burner,” Danny says glumly. Ethan is sitting up on the sofa, looking around blearily and trying to focus.

“Meaning?” Isaac asks.

“It’s a pre-paid cell phone,” Danny clarifies. “No contract, no records, no info. No _nothing_.”

“There has to be _something_ you can track,” Boyd says.

Danny rubs a hand over his face. “If a guy pays in cash, can I track his credit card information? No. This is the same kind of thing. Criminals use these phones precisely because they can’t be tracked.”

Stiles sits down in one of the chairs. “Does it matter that we know a time he used it? Phones can be traced that way, right?”

“Yeah, by the FBI,” Danny says. “If I had a current conversation like, I knew where one side of it was I could maybe track it from that end. But this conversation that we got the number from, I don’t know what number he called, or where that person was, or even _when_ it was beyond a vague time frame. It’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“Can you at least try?” Ethan asks, leaning over Danny and rubbing his back.

“Yeah, I can try,” Danny says, with a tired sigh. “Ignoring the fact that this would be a federal crime . . .”

“I’ll protect you,” Stiles says. He rubs a hand over his face. “I’m going to try to get some shut-eye. Uh. Someone better come with me. I don’t . . . think it’s going to go very well, but, you know. I’ll give it a whirl.”

“I’m pretty wiped out,” Scott says immediately. Stiles nods and then decides to take a quick shower first. It might relax him.

It doesn’t. He’s just as tense when he crawls under the blankets in one of the smaller beds. His body aches and he has a strange, pinched throbbing in his temples. Scott shifts into his wolf form, because he and Stiles are bros and cuddling is awkward if they’re both boy-shaped. Stiles curls around him and closes his eyes.

He’s surprised that he actually does drift off to sleep, but he’s plagued almost immediately by horrible, feverish nightmares. Dreams where he finds Derek’s body in pieces, where hunters are chasing him through the woods, where his father stands at his grave and sobs for him. He wakes up shouting several times.

Around one in the morning, he decides to make himself some tea. Danny is still typing, and there are dark circles underneath his eyes. He gives a little nod when Stiles grabs a mug, fills it with water, and sticks it in the microwave. The tea is dragonwell, Lydia’s favorite, and she had brought some of her own. Just the smell of it fills his eyes with tears. He rubs a hand over them and tries to focus, but he’s dizzy again. Actually, he feels a little sick. The world is blurred and rolling around him in waves. He feels hot and disoriented.

He manages to stagger to the bathroom before he throws up violently, his entire body wracked with it. At some point he becomes dimly aware of Scott leaning over him, rubbing at his back. “You’re really warm,” he says, when Stiles finally shudders to stillness. “I think you have a fever. I’m going to check your temperature. You just stay here.”

“No problem,” Stiles manages, his voice raw and aching. Great time for him to get sick. He hasn’t exactly been taking care of himself, but his body seems to be in full revolt. Everything hurts from his head to his toes. Scott comes back a moment later with a glass of water and the thermometer from his first aid kit. Stiles rinses out his mouth and spits into the toilet, then lets Scott stick the thermometer in his mouth.

“One oh one point four,” Scott says, frowning at the digital read-out.

“Awesome,” Stiles says. “Don’t mother hen me, I’ll go back to bed, I was only making some tea anyway. Just – help me up.”

Scott nods. He gets a hand underneath Stiles’ arm, and they’re both surprised when Stiles lets out a yelp as soon as Scott’s hand touches the hourglass tattoo. Scott makes a noise as well, a hiss of pain as he yanks his hand away. “Jesus,” he says. “That thing is burning hot.”

They both stare at the inside of Stiles’ forearm. The tattoo is shifting in color now, mostly black but with swirling hints of a deep, blood red.

“That’s what’s making you sick,” Scott says. “It’s not a time bomb at all. It won’t kill you all at once at the end of the spell. It’s killing you already.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a lot of fun with Erica's profanity in this chapter.

 

Stiles stares at the symbol for what feels like a long time, watching another grain of sand drifting down. Then he tries to stagger to his feet again. Scott catches him and manages to get him up the rest of the way. He goes back out into the kitchen. The others have either heard the noise or felt his distress, because they’re gathering in the living room. The only exception is Jackson, who either didn’t hear them or doesn’t care. Danny looks up from the computer, pushing a hand through his hair. Stiles gives all of them a nod to reassure them that he’s at least mostly okay, then picks up his phone from the counter he had left it on. He stops to take a breath before he takes a picture of the symbol on the inside of his arm. Then he dials Deaton.

It rings five times and then goes to voicemail. Stiles hangs up and dials again. This time Deaton picks up, although he sounds somewhat sleepy, which is unusual for him. “Stiles. What is it?”

“I’m sending you a picture,” Stiles says, tapping his phone’s screen. “I need you to look at it.”

“All right.” There’s a pause. Then he says, “Stiles, what is this?”

“The local hunters gave me forty-eight hours to prove my innocence in some nasty hunter deaths around here,” Stiles says. “This spell is meant to kill me if I try to run, et cetera. I _thought_ that meant that at forty-eight hours, I would drop dead. But that’s not what this does, is it.”’

“No,” Deaton says. His voice is grim. “How long has it been on you?”

“About twelve hours. So I guess that I’m about twenty-five percent dead?”

“What are your symptoms?”

“Fever, generalized fatigue and pain, dizziness, nausea and vomiting,” Stiles says.

“It’ll only get worse from here,” Deaton says. “I’d say that by sundown, you’re going to be, well, on your last legs, so to speak.”

“Jesus,” Stiles says, gritting his teeth with frustration. “If I’d _realized_ that, I never would’ve let them put the damned thing on me. Or at least not made cute quips about only needing two days instead of three. Jesus _Christ_. What can I do?”

There’s a silence that doesn’t bode well. “I can think of three options, none of them pleasant,” Deaton says. “There’s a remedy, a potion, that would slow the effects of the spell. But its main ingredient is mistletoe. It would work on a human, but it would kill a werewolf, and frankly, Stiles, I simply don’t know what it would do to you.”

“Okay, next,” Stiles says.

“Jackson – ”

“No,” Stiles says. “He’s already refused to touch this and I don’t want him anywhere near it. He’s . . . struggling.” Stiles’ gaze darts to Danny, who rubs a hand over his face and looks away. “I think he’s doing okay, but this past day has been like sending an alcoholic to a wine tasting. It’s better if I keep this away from him. For all of us.”

“Okay,” Deaton says. “Then last but not least, you could put a mountain ash circle around your arm. Jackson could make one for you – he’d be fine with it, and I know he brought some of the actual wood with him. That would keep the spell from reaching the majority of your body, so you’d be clear-headed, et cetera.”

“So what’s the catch?” Stiles asks.

“Well, all the power of the spell would be focused in your arm. It’d be a lot like putting ten pounds of dynamite in a five-pound bag. The damage you’re undergoing now is a result of the spell, and it won’t be permanent. But if it’s concentrated like that . . . we’re talking about nerve damage, bone deterioration, possibly even rot. And I don’t know if your arm would recover afterwards.”

“And as a sunny bonus, since only the magic would be cut off, not the nerves themselves, I would be able to feel every bit of it,” Stiles says. “And it would probably feel like I dipped my arm in molten lava.” He starts to laugh hysterically, unable to help it. “I’m sorry. I’m just thinking back to the time Derek was waving a bone saw in my face, threatening to decapitate me if I didn’t chop his arm off.”

Deaton lets out a quiet sigh. “Well, that is an option,” he says. “If it’s one you’re going to take, I’d do it sooner rather than later. Every minute you wait increases the possibility that the spell will do permanent damage to your body. Another twenty-four hours and you could still die even if you removed the arm.”

“So my best option is to suffer through?” Stiles says. “That’s coming from _you_ , so nobody here can yell at me for it?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Deaton says. “And the sooner you get them to take it off you, the better.”

“Can it be taken off by anyone else?” Stiles asks. “Like, say, you?”

“I could try,” Deaton says, “and I might succeed. But the _safest_ way for it to happen is for it to be removed by the person who created it.”

“Okay. Thanks for the help.” Stiles hangs up and tucks the phone away. He rubs a trembling hand over his sweaty forehead. Everyone waits quietly while he tries to sort out his thoughts. “Danny,” he finally says, “you said that if you had a current call, you might be able to piggyback off the signal and find his phone that way?”

“Yeah,” Danny says, “or at least, I can try.”

“Good. Then I am going to call this son of a bitch.”

“Jesus, that’s risky,” Yasmin says. “What if he figures out why you’re calling and runs?”

“I admit that it’s not my preference,” Stiles says. “I do normally go for a bit more subtlety, but we’re working against a clock and my abilities are only going to degrade as time goes by.” He lets out another breath. “I can play this guy. I know enough about him now. But the longer I wait, the more dangerous it’s going to get. We do this now or we don’t do it at all. I’m taking the risk.”

Ravinder and Yasmin exchange a glance. Then Ravinder nods. “Very well. I have a concern. His current location may not be where the others are.”

“Two days ago I would have been worried about that,” Stiles agrees, “but they were obviously living in the house where we got attacked by the monkeys. When we found that place, they would have had to fall back to another location. Their resources aren’t unlimited. They won’t have eight houses. The most likely place for him to be is wherever they’re keeping the others.”

Ravinder nods again. “Reasonable enough. What can we do?”

“Just keep quiet in the background,” Stiles says, “and never, ever tell anyone about how much blubbering I’m about to do.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

It’s late when Ruben comes back into the basement. Derek has watched the light fade from the windows, the sun setting on their first full day of captivity. They’ve had water two or three times, but Ruben brings food. Just the smell of it makes him groan. He comes in with a bag with the McDonalds logo. “You’re lucky that Khan needs you in good shape for your spells,” he says unwrapping a burger and holding it up to Erica’s mouth. “I wouldn’t bother to feed you otherwise.”

Erica snaps at the burger. He withdraws it out of her reach. “Manners,” he says.

“I’m not going to waste manners on a dick-nosed turd like you,” she replies.

He rolls his eyes at her and walks over to Justin instead. The alpha is a little less vicious in his attempts to get to the hamburger, and eats it out of Ruben’s hands in three large bites.

Lydia wrinkles her nose at the fare, which is not up to her standard, but she’s too hungry to argue. Allison isn’t, when it’s her turn. “No ketchup?” she says, after the first bite.

“Cry about it,” Ruben says.

Derek and Aiden both eat without complaint, but Mac shakes her head a little and says, “I can’t eat that. I’m vegetarian.”

Several people blink at her in skepticism. “A vegetarian . . . werewolf,” Ruben says. “That’s got to be the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Hey, nobody asked for your opinion, you stupid fuckbiscuit,” Erica says. “She’s a vege-fucking-tarian.”

“Even a chicken sandwich would be better,” Mac says, almost apologetically. “If I eat beef, I’ll be sick.”

“That’s a shame,” Ruben says, and starts eating the hamburger himself.

“Didn’t you get any fries or anything?” Allison asks him.

“Yes, but they’re mine,” Ruben replies, smiling.

“Look, you racist assclown – ” Erica starts. Then the door opens and Gabriel comes in.

“Have they eaten?” he asks.

“All except the vegetarian,” Ruben says with a snort. Gabriel gives him a somewhat questioning look. “Don’t look at me. She won’t eat.”

“Make her eat,” Gabriel says. “I need her in the spell. She wasn’t in it last time. She’s fresh. But I want her to eat first.”

Mac shakes her head and clamps her jaws shut. Ruben scowls at her and tries to squeeze her mouth open, but he needs both hands to do that, and that leaves him no hand to hold the burger. “Just give her the fries,” Derek snarls.

“She gets the hamburger or nothing,” Ruben says.

Gabriel looks up from where he’s chalking symbols onto the wall and snaps, “Give her the fries, for Christ’s sake. What the hell does it matter? The moon is coming up in forty minutes and I need to be ready by then.”

Ruben scowls but complies, getting the fries out of the bag and forcing them into Mac’s mouth in such large handfuls that she nearly chokes. While he’s doing that, Gabriel moves Allison over to the wall, then after a pause to consider, Lydia. Lydia protests, saying that if he’s going to let somebody out of the spell, it should be Derek, who still hasn’t fully recovered. Gabriel doesn’t reply.

“I’ll be all right,” Derek tells her. He’s more concerned about Mac, who looks a little ill from the way Ruben force-fed her. He leans over and rubs his cheek against her temple, trying to reassure her even though he can’t use his hands. She gives him a wan smile in return. Gabriel and Ruben get the rest of them moved around. This time Erica is the focal point of the spell, at the top of the pentagon, with Derek and Mac at the bottom and the alphas again in the middle. Ruben has clearly decided to stay this time, to keep an eye on Allison and make sure she doesn’t manage to escape again. She gives him that narrow-eyed look that so clearly conveys her homicidal intent.

Derek is determined to stay conscious this time, to try to disrupt the spell if possible, but the minute he smells the incense and Gabriel starts chanting, his mind goes dull and foggy. He’s vaguely aware of his head nodding forward, of the feeling of loss, like someone has pulled the plug out of a drain and all his energy is simply swirling away. His limbs start to go numb and tingly. He completely loses track of time.

The tense atmosphere is broken when there’s the shrill ringing of a phone. Gabriel visibly startles, then throws down the staff he’s holding and whirls on Ruben. “Are you _serious_?” he snarls. “You left your phone on? Do you not see that I am _working_ here?”

“Nobody should have the number,” Ruben snaps back.

Derek gives a hoarse laugh, stirring as the effects of the spell start to drift away. “Well, then I guess we know who’s calling,” he says.

Ruben gives him a fierce glare, but then jabs the button on the phone. “Hello?”

“Is this Ruben Gutierrez?” It’s Stiles’ voice on the phone, Derek can hear it even though Ruben is several feet away, and he sounds terrible. Raw and scratchy, exhausted, and in pain. He pulls at the chains and lets out an angry growl despite himself.

“Who’s asking?” Ruben says.

“You know who this is,” Stiles replies. “It’s Stiles. Stilinski. Please, I – I need you to let my pack go. It’s me that you have a problem with. They had nothing to do with it.”

Ruben laughs. He sounds absolutely delighted. “So you call me to beg? Oh, that’s very funny. The mysterious boy in red, the human alpha. What exactly do you hope to accomplish here? Because I’m nowhere near done with you yet.”

“You are,” Stiles says. “You’ve gotten what you wanted.” His voice catches a little, every syllable filled with pain and despair. “The hunters – Stella Jones and her sorcerer Eli – they caught up with me. That’s what you wanted, right? You set me up. You outmaneuvered me. You can brag all you want. But I’m not going to be around to hear it.”

“If Stella had caught you, you would be dead,” Ruben sneers.

Stiles lets out a weak sounding cough. “She wanted to,” he says, “but Eli convinced her a quick death was too good for me. He did a spell. I’ll be dead by sundown.”

“Stiles, what the _fuck_ ,” Erica snarls, snapping at the chains and trying to pull free.

“Is that my pack?” Stiles’ voice raises in heartbreaking hope. “Are they there, can they hear me? Are they all right?”

There’s so much noise for several moments that Gabriel has to slam down his staff with the sound of a small explosion to shut the pack up. Even those half-conscious by the spell are trying to talk. In the wake of silence that follows, they can all hear Stiles crying, _sobbing_ , on the other end of the phone.

“Please,” he says. “Please let them go. Please. They never did anything to you. It was me. It was always me.”

“Yes, it was,” Ruben says, his voice cold and hard but with a strange gleam of joy. “And I want you to die knowing that I’m going to make them _suffer_ before I kill them. Each and every one of them.” He drops the phone to the concrete floor and slams his foot down on it.

Derek lunges at him, and for the briefest of moments he feels the chains almost give. The collar is still tight around his neck, and the harder he pulls against it, the more difficult it is to get air. While he struggles to get free, Erica is unleashing a tirade on the hunter. “You cum slug, I hope to hell you got laid recently because you’re going to _die_ today, do you fucking hear me, you piece of shit, you moronic spunk monkey, you – ”

Ruben hits her hard across the face, and she goes listing to one side, nearly losing her balance. When she looks up, there’s blood dripping from her mouth and her eyes are glowing a dangerous gold.

“Derek, stop,” Mac whispers. “Stop, you’re going to choke yourself out and that won’t help anything.”

Derek forces himself to ease back against the chain and gulps in air in a series of sobs. He knows that Stiles isn’t one to beg. That there might be more to this than he’s seeing. But he also knows that Stiles _would_ beg, if it came down to the wire, if he thought that was the only option he had left. Regardless of whether or not Stiles was bluffing on the phone, there was still something very wrong with him. Derek could hear it in his voice.

“Can I get back to work now?” Gabriel asks, clearly pissed off.

Ruben withdraws from the circle. Allison is just staring at him, pinning him down with a feral look that would have been at home on any wolf. “I am going to destroy you,” she says quietly, “and everything you stand for.”

“You’ll have a hard time doing that if you’re dead, sweetheart,” Ruben says, sneering at her.

“It won’t matter,” Allison says. “Sure, you might kill me. But I hope you enjoy looking over your shoulder, because that’s what you’ll be doing for the rest of your short, miserable life, because my father _will_ find you. But only if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, my _mother_ will find you. I might die today, but I’ll die knowing that when you die, it will be in _agony_.”

There’s the briefest moment of uncertainty on Ruben’s face. Then Gabriel starts chanting again and Ruben turns his attention back to the spell, while Allison’s gaze bores into the back of his skull.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Stiles puts the phone down and takes a breath. “How’d I do?”

“Christ,” Yasmin says, “you would’ve fooled _me_.” She turns away, wiping tears out of her own eyes.

“Truly an inspired performance,” Ravinder agrees.

“Yeah, well,” Stiles says, “acting is easy when you really believe what you’re saying.” He looks over at Danny. “Was it enough?”

“If it wasn’t, another few minutes wouldn’t have helped,” Danny says. He’s already typing. “Is there any more coffee?”

“I’ll get you some,” Ethan says, getting to his feet.

Stiles wants to stay awake until he’s gotten an answer, but the exhaustion is just dragging his eyes closed. He starts to slump over. He finds his head resting on fur and nestles a little closer, not knowing or caring who he’s leaning against. His sleep is again plagued by horrible dreams, but he’s so tired that he doesn’t wake up, and the dreams just get worse. Finally, Scott shakes him awake. He’s pale and sweating, and Scott has to help him into the bathroom so he can be sick again. But there’s nothing left in his stomach, so he just leans over the toilet and gags.

Scott makes him more of the green tea with honey, but before it can finish steeping, Danny says, “Okay, do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“Give me the good news and keep the bad news to yourself,” Stiles tells him.

Danny almost smiles a little. “So, I know which cell tower this asshole’s phone pinged off of when he got your call. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I can’t nail it down more exactly than that. Not with a burner phone. It doesn’t have a GPS or anything like that.”

“That’s by far not the worst news we’ve had lately,” Boyd says. “How much area are we talking?”

“Well, fortunately,” Danny says, “it doesn’t look like they’re out in the middle of nowhere. The cell tower is in a Portland suburb. There are multiple cell towers to choose from, so we’re not talking about one cell tower covering fifty square miles of territory. I’d say we’re looking at an eight block radius.”

“Shit, we can cover that in an hour,” Isaac says.

Stiles nods. “Wake Jackson. We’re leaving.”

“Right now?” Danny asks, drooping with weariness.

“Yeah. Sorry, but we don’t dare wait. It’s already almost three AM. The witching hour is drawing to a close. I want to hit this guy as close after sunrise as I can. That’s when he’ll be at his weakest. We’re at least an hour and a half away from Portland as it is. We need to get moving.”

“What are we going to do with the guy once we get there?” Isaac asks.

“I’ve got some ideas about that. I’ll go over them on the way.” Stiles thinks things over. “Let me ride with Yasmin and Jackson. I’ll need them the most. Scott, you too.”

Everyone nods. Jackson’s been rousted out of bed. He’s surly and half-awake, but perks up a little when he’s given coffee and the news. They’re on the road a few minutes later. Yasmin drives; she got a solid six hours of sleep before the excitement had started, so she’s by far the most awake. Jackson is annoyed but agrees to do his part without argument. Scott hates the plan, which Stiles expected, but he agrees that it’s probably the best one they’ve got. Yasmin surprises Stiles by liking the plan.

Isaac’s estimation that they can cover the territory in an hour is a little optimistic. If they were fresh, Stiles thinks they could do it. And most of the pack are fully capable. Even Mei and Ethan have improved at this point to be on par with a normal human, even if they aren’t all the way back to their alpha selves. It’s Stiles that’s the problem. He has to stop every few minutes and just breathe. Several times, he thinks about finding a place to hole up and let the others search without him, but he decides against it each time. The idea of letting any of his remaining pack out of his sight right now makes his stomach churn.

They try carrying him, but the motion keeps making him sick, and then they have to stop while he dry heaves against a wall. Not only is that taking up almost as much time, but Stiles is afraid that it will draw attention. They’ll just have to move slow.

So move slow they do. The cell tower was in a residential neighborhood that was, well – ‘a slum’ would be a fairly generous description. The houses are small, one-story affairs with car ports instead of garages, and Christmas decorations that strain just to be tacky. Stiles thinks that he’s more worried about being mugged than he is about being seen by one of his adversaries.

The sun is just peeking over the horizon, and Stiles is taking one of his breaks, composing a text to his father to let him know the progress they’ve made, when his phone rings. He startles a little, then sees the same out-of-area number from the day before. He’s still too nervous for one of his typical greetings. “Stilinski.”

“This is Mikael,” the hunter greets him. “You should know there was another attack last night.”

“Shit, of _course_ there was,” Stiles says, pushing a hand through his hair, and puts his phone on speaker. “How many killed? Anyone I know?”

“Well, that’s the funny thing about – several wounded but nobody killed,” Mikael says. “I was wondering if you knew the reason why. Stella herself wasn’t attacked, but her right hand man, a guy by the name of Andy Tyson, was. Along with three of his guys. It was messy, but they fought their way out of it.”

Stiles is frowning, thinking. His brain feels slow, clogged. “What were they attacked by?”

“Wolves,” Mikael says, “but . . . not wolves.”

“Let me guess: they disintegrated after being killed?”

“Yes,” Mikael says. “Magical constructs. Not only that, but some of them weren’t . . . right. It’s hard to describe, Andy said. Some of them were missing legs, or eyes, or were bald. One of them had no teeth. It seemed very strange.”

Jackson leans over. “He botched the spell,” he says.

“I’m sorry?” Mikael says.

“This asshole Khan,” Jackson says, impatiently. “He fucked up the spell somehow. Didn’t put in enough juice or concentration.”

“He didn’t seem to have a problem the first few times,” Ethan says skeptically.

Jackson glowers at him and says, “I don’t know _why_ he fucked it up. But magic isn’t like the prize at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box. It’s difficult. And this guy, from what we’ve heard, is heavily reliant on the trappings of magic, the ceremony and the props. It’d be much more likely for him to fuck up a spell than a guy like Stone, who basically just flung magic around however he felt like it.”

“Magic is about belief,” Stiles says, nodding. “Gabriel doubted his spell.”

“Yeah. Maybe he was tired, maybe he got interrupted and it threw off his rhythm, maybe a lot of things,” Jackson says.

Stiles is frowning thoughtfully, feeling better now. “Would he _know_ that had happened? I mean, would he be aware?”

“Doubt it,” Jackson says. “It’s not something that was happening right in front of his face, where he could see the evidence. And frankly, if he’d realized it was going to fail, he probably would have pulled out. It could have blown up in his face.”

“Good,” Stiles says. “Mikael, I should be in the clear now, right? Since it wasn’t actually werewolves that attacked?”

Mikael sighs. “I pointed that out to Stella. She said that you or a sorcerer attached to your pack could have summoned the wolves yourselves.”

“Leaving aside why I would _bother_ – never mind,” Stiles says, shaking his head. It’s no use arguing with Stella, who wanted to kill him even though she admitted he was innocent. “Okay. I can work with this. Mikael, will you do a few things for me?”

There’s a marked pause, and then Mikael says, “Yes,” without stopping to ask what they are. Stiles files away that Mikael clearly feels guilty about the day before.

“I need you to get in touch with Ruben. Use whatever excuse you want. Just say you heard he was in the area and thought he might like the news. Have you interacted with him enough that you can do that without arousing too much suspicion?”

“Do I have to do it myself?” Mikael asks.

“Normally I’d say no, but we don’t need a game of telephone here. What I need you to tell him is very, very exact, because I spoke to him last night and if there are any contradictions between what I said and what you tell him, there will be immediate, gigantic red flags.”

Mikael thinks about it. “I can make it work,” he says.

“Okay. I need you to tell him that I’ve been captured and am going to be publically executed. Or, well, semi-publically. Not at the town square, but in front of the hunters. Now, when I spoke to him yesterday, I told him there was a spell that would kill me by sundown, that Eli had put on me. So you have to make it sound like I got caught, got the spell put on me – ”

“Then escaped, and got recaptured,” Mikael says. “And now we’re planning to watch you dangle at the end of the rope. Okay, I’m with you.”

“In between escaping and getting recaptured,” Stiles says, “obviously my pack and I attacked Andy and his guys. Here’s the rest . . .”

There’s a pause while Mikael gets a pencil so he can take notes. As usual, Stiles’ plan is thoroughly detailed. Mikael surprises him by taking direction without complaint. It’s Stiles’ ass on the line, so using his plan makes sense, but he doesn’t remember Chris being that easy-going about things in the beginning. That makes him think of something else. “Call Chris, will you? We might need his clout. Or his guns.”

“I’ll call, but I think he’s already on his way,” Mikael says.

That doesn’t surprise Stiles. “Okay. When that’s all set up, call me and I’ll tell you where we are for a pick-up.”

“All right,” Mikael says. There’s another moment of hesitance, and then he says, “It’s a pretty good plan.”

“Well, as one that _doesn’t_ involve me ending up in the hospital, I have to say that my pack probably likes it better than my usual ones,” Stiles says. Mikael lets out a snort of laughter and then hangs up. Stiles draws in a breath. He had felt better for a few minutes, calm and focused. Gabriel’s botched spell has given him a wonderful moment of opportunity that he hadn’t anticipated, and it makes things easier. Mikael can get Ruben out of the house, so it’s only Gabriel that they need to fight.

But the moment passes. When he tries to stand, he’s so dizzy that Isaac and Boyd have to catch him before he can fall. He closes his eyes and tries to ignore the nausea, then glances down at the spell on his wrist. It’s blood red all the way through now, with a few swirls of crimson.

“Are you sure you can handle this?” Scott asks. “I could go in with you – ”

“Noooooope,” Stiles says. “It has to just be me and Yas. We have to look weak and helpless or he’ll just eat us for breakfast before we can implement stage name-taking, let alone stage ass-kicking.”

Ten minutes later, they find it. Jackson doesn’t hesitate. They round a corner, he points to a house about three doors down, and says, “That one.”

“Awesome,” Stiles says. He glances over his shoulder. “We’re going to wait until Ruben leaves. It’ll be better if the sun is up a little more, anyway. He’s gotta be wiped out after doing that spell last night, even if it flopped. Hopefully that means he won’t fling anything right off the bat.”

There are too many of them to stake out the house with any amount of stealth. Stiles sends everyone in pairs to the houses immediately behind, beside, and across from the one in question. They lurk in the side yards and stay out of sight. He and Yasmin hide in the car port of the house on the right. “You ready for this?” Stiles asks her.

Yasmin nods. “Whatever happens . . . I really appreciate everything you’ve done for us. I’m sorry I got you into this.”

“Eh, it would’ve happened anyway, from the looks of it,” Stiles says, with a shrug. “That’s just my life.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, folks, I doubled down to get this one down. I felt like we all needed it after last night's episode. <3
> 
> Oh, and I was asked and do want to clarify - there's not going to be any Jackson/Lydia in this series. I understand it would be hugely problematic given the events of The Boy in Red, and I don't intend to go there.

 

Yasmin is about to reply when the door to the house they’re watching opens and Ruben comes out. Instinctively, they both duck even lower, although they’re already out of sight. Ruben is talking on his cell phone as he gets behind the wheel of the car and pulls out. “Of course he talks on his phone while he drives,” Stiles says, and Yasmin giggles despite herself. They watch him drive down the street and turn the corner, moving out of sight.

“You want to wait to make sure he doesn’t come back?” Yasmin asks.

“Nope. If he does come back, we’re fucked, so let’s get it done.”

She nods, and they make their way over to the house. The door that Ruben left through isn’t locked. Yasmin shivers as they ease into the house, but if there was any sort of magic laid on the threshold, Stiles can’t feel it. Moving as quietly as possible, they do a cursory exploration of the first floor and find nothing. Stiles points to a door that is ajar and leads to a downward leading staircase. Yasmin nods.

He’s not a big fan of basements, but right now, that’s the furthest thought from his mind. The achy weariness has faded again. He’s focused and in the moment, although he’s willing to bet he’ll pay for it later. Yasmin starts down the stairs, going first. For a few moments, Stiles actually thinks that maybe Gabriel will sleep through the entire rescue, and for once things might actually go easier than expected.

Of course, that’s not what happens. Gabriel is standing in the center of the room, all ceremony with his robes and his staff, smirking as they come down the last few steps and into his view. “Only the two of you?” he drawls.

He’ll bluff, Stiles knows. He doesn’t _want_ to have this fight. He’s a beta facing two alphas, even if one of them is human, and he’s been up all night doing sorcery. The sun is up and his powers are at their lowest point. If he can keep them talking, he will. So Stiles takes a moment to flick his gaze over the layout. He and Yasmin are standing on a raised platform with a railing, with three steps down on either side. There are five posts in the lower section of the room that have been set up in a pentagon. Then there are the captives. Derek, by himself, on the post at the head of the room, furthest from Stiles. The post next to him are Ethan and Mac. Across from them are Lydia and Erica. Justin and Allison are on the posts closest to him. All of them are on their knees, practically suspended by the chains on their wrists and around their throat.

All of them struggle feebly at Yasmin and Stiles’ entrance, but they’re obviously weak and exhausted. Stiles keeps his face carefully blank, but he can’t stop his eyes from flaring crimson. Yasmin’s are doing the same. She lets out a cry of rage, a battle cry, and launches herself over the railing, throwing herself at Gabriel.

“Yas, don’t!” Justin yells, but it’s too late. A crackle of electricity comes from Gabriel’s staff and snakes towards her, throwing her across the room. Yas bounces off the wall and comes back twice as fast, taking Gabriel in a full tackle. They struggle for a few moments before he manages to throw her off again with a snarling noise and a puff of acrid smoke. She lands in a heap at Allison and Justin’s feet, coughing. She tries to claw her way up, but then collapses again. Justin strains to get free, and the building itself creaks, but he chokes and gasps at the collar and has to back off.

“Is that it, then?” Gabriel says, then turns his gaze to Stiles. “I trust that I can expect more out of you.”

Stiles lifts his hands in surrender. “Well,” he says hoarsely, “we have a common enemy.”

“Really?” Gabriel laughs heartily. “It’s going to be that ploy? I expected better, after everything Ruben told me. I really did.”

“Do you know what this is?” Stiles asks, holding his arm out, forearm up.

Gabriel’s eyes go a little wide. “Then you weren’t lying,” he says.

Stiles lets out another weak cough. Derek tries to struggle to his feet, but can’t manage to shake off the effects of the spell. “No,” he says. “I know you and Ruben can’t stand each other. I know that because I’ve met him. He’s an arrogant, supercilious jackass. You put up with him because he got you the alpha pack. Well, you’ve gotten what you wanted. But there’s no reason you have to let him have what _he_ wants.”

“I can’t take that spell off you, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Gabriel says.

“No.” Stiles wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I just thought you might help me have a little fun on my way out.”

“Fun?!” Gabriel screams abruptly. “Is that what you think this is about? Do you think I’m having _fun_?” He takes another step forward, and the tip of his staff starts to glow and emit a shower of ultraviolet sparks. “I lost my alpha! I live every day with that loss, and the only thing I live for is to take whatever’s precious away from those who stand in my way!” He grabs Derek by the hair and yanks his head back. “Give me one good reason not to rip his throat out with my bare hands!”

“I’ll give you one,” Allison says, and she swings her crossbow around and pulls the trigger. The bolt sings through the air and hits Gabriel right in his center mass, just below his sternum. He chokes and staggers back, letting go of Derek.

Yasmin rushes forward again, and now she has a knife in her hand, the same knife that Allison had given her the first day at the Stilinski house. Solid steel with silver in the notches. Gabriel throws a hand out in front of himself and screams the words to a defensive spell, but nothing happens. He gasps and folds inwards, around the arrow, and the knife bites deep into his throat. Blood gushes everywhere. Yasmin gives the knife a twist as she pulls it out. Black lines spread instantly from the flecks of silver, and Gabriel collapses to the ground, writhing and spasming. A moment later, he shudders and goes still.

“Damn, _nice_ ,” Stiles says.

“What – where did she – ” Aiden is gaping at Allison, who’s standing tall and proud, free of her restraints and still holding the crossbow trained on Gabriel. Stiles is already on his phone, calling Scott to let him know that the troops can come in.

Yasmin grins at him fiercely and holds up the key. “I just grabbed the key from his robes while he was tossing me around,” she says. “He didn’t even notice I had the crossbow. It was already loaded and everything. I just needed Stiles to keep him distracted long enough for me to get Allison free.” She grabs Justin’s chains and starts to undo them, but gets distracted by kissing him. He’s leaning against the chains, letting her support his weight.

“That was _so hot_ , Yas,” he finally says, as she gets the chains off and then throws the keys to Allison so she can start freeing the others.

Stiles is leaning heavily against the railing, and it takes him a moment to martial the energy, but when he does, he jogs down the steps and just throws himself at Derek. The werewolf is still chained, so he can’t hug back, but Stiles just wraps his arms around Derek’s waist, presses his face into Derek’s chest, and makes a choked little noise, hugging him with all his remaining, limited strength.

“What’s wrong, you don’t feel right,” Derek snarls at him. “What’s that spell you showed him?”

Stiles can’t even manage to answer. Allison is unchaining Mac. Justin walks over to them and says, “Allow me.” He grabs the chains holding Derek to the post, and puts one foot against the beam. With proper leverage, he’s able to tear the chains right out of the wall.

“You do know we have the keys now, right?” Allison asks, moving over to undo the locks on Derek.

“Yeah, but that was really fucking satisfying,” Justin says.

“What’s wrong?” Derek growls softly into Stiles’ hair, as his wrists come free and Allison gets that damnable collar off him.

“Just feeling a little sick,” Stiles says, breathing shallowly. Derek rubs a hand up and down his back, and _God_ that feels good, just to have his lupa in contact with him again. “It’ll pass. I’ll be okay.”

Derek obviously doesn’t like that answer one bit, but as long as he’s allowed to have both arms wrapped around Stiles, he doesn’t seem to want to argue. Erica and Lydia are free now and are coming over to greet Stiles, rubbing their cheek against his hair and squeezing his hands. Then the others are bursting into the basement and everything turns chaotic. Stiles just sits there in Derek’s arms, listening to the reunions around him, smiling a little at the noise. Scott grabs Allison by the waist and spins her around before kissing her hard on the mouth. Ethan jumps on his twin and nearly sends them both sprawling to the ground. Danny’s hugging Mac so hard that she squeaks. Erica’s talking in the foulest language imaginable about how awesome Yasmin and Allison were as Isaac and Boyd sandwich her in the biggest hug they can manage.

“That was a pretty good shot,” Aiden agrees. “You almost got him in the heart.”

Allison gives him a withering look. “If I’d wanted to hit him in the heart, I would have hit him in the heart,” she says.

“Then what were you aiming for?” Aiden asks, frowning.

“She was aiming for his chakra, you uneducated child,” Ravinder says, rolling his eyes a little. “The bolt was mountain ash, yes?”

Yasmin nods. “Jackson carved it for us on the way here.”

Several people look over to see Jackson standing at the foot of the basement stairs with Wilma. He scowls at all of them.

“Mountain ash through the chakra, specifically the navel chakra,” Ravinder says, “which is responsible for self-worth, confidence, et cetera, would cripple the abilities of a sorcerer. It’s why he couldn’t defend himself with magic when Yasmin attacked him the second time.”

Aiden is still frowning. “How did you know it was a mountain ash arrow?” he asks Allison.

“It’s a bolt, not an arrow.” Allison’s look becomes even more disappointed. “We were fighting a sorcerer. What the hell else kind of bolt would Stiles have smuggled me?”

Justin’s laughing. “Geez, you guys,” he says, kissing Yasmin again. He’s got her up against the post and his hand underneath her shirt a moment later. “Death and destruction looks amazing on you, babe.”

“We’re right here,” Mei says, in a tone that’s softly amused and has the air of an oft-repeated refrain.

“We should probably get out of here,” Erica says, with a toss of her head. “Before those two make it to third base.”

Allison looks over at where Stiles is pressed against Derek, occasionally giving little shivers. “What about Gutierrez?” she asks, her voice a little too quiet.

Stiles opens his eyes, meets her gaze, and smiles. “Oh, don’t you worry about him,” he says. “I’m taking care of that. But, first things first . . .” He glances at his watch. It’s just about eight in the morning. “Who wants breakfast?”

“Didn’t we pass a Golden Corral on our way into town?” Isaac says.

“Bitchin’,” Erica says. “I’m going to eat _all_ the things.”

“I need this explained to me before we go anywhere,” Derek says stubbornly, taking a hold of Stiles’ forearm and then hissing in pain as his fingers brush the mark. “Jesus.”

“Long story made short: it’s a spell that’s slowly killing me, and it _will_ be removed by the hunter who put it there before the end of the day, and I will be fine,” Stiles says. “For the longer version, help me up and I’ll tell you on our way to the restaurant.”

“You guys wait here,” Boyd says. “Isaac, Danny, and I will go get the cars.”

Everyone agrees to this. Yasmin goes upstairs to see if either of the men were keeping any clothes she could steal, since her shirt is soaked through with Gabriel’s blood. While she’s doing that, several of the others go with her to search through the house and see if any of their belongings are there. Lydia finds a locked drawer that has all of their protection charms in it. All of them breathe a sigh of relief once the cords have been knotted together and they’re wearing them again. They leave Gabriel’s body in the basement and head out to the street. It takes some effort and creativity to cram all seventeen of them (plus Wilma) into three cars, but they manage. Stiles sits in the backseat of the Jeep, sprawled on the laps of Derek, Erica, and Lydia. He’s nearly asleep by the time they get to the restaurant.

The cashier gives their huge party of bruised, dirty, altogether unkempt people an uncertain look, but Derek charms her with a smile and a joke about how maybe they should just pay twice for everyone because they were just at a brutal rugby game and they’re probably going to eat three times as much as the average customer. The cashier laughs, blushes, and takes Derek’s credit card.

Derek takes a seat and pulls Stiles onto his lap, and dispatches Erica to get them food. Scott tries to do the same thing with Allison, and she laughs at him before taking him by the hand and dragging him up to the buffet. Stiles says he doesn’t really feel well enough to eat, he’ll just have some coffee, but Erica knows him well and brings him some chocolate cake. He manages to get a little of that down while Derek clears through his first plate of bacon, eggs, and pancakes.

“Oh my God, I don’t even care if these eggs are free range,” Mac says, digging in. “At least they’re freakin’ _eggs_.”

“So are you really a vegetarian?” Justin asks curiously.

“Yeah,” she says. “I was before I was turned, that’s all.”

“It’s kinda weird,” he says.

Mac shrugs. “And the rest of my pack are all totally normal, I’ve gathered.”

Justin laughs. “Touché.”

Jackson stalks back to the table a few minutes later. “Here, there was one apple turnover left so I grabbed it for you,” he says, slapping a plate down in front of Lydia. “You, uh, you still like those, right?”

Lydia arches an eyebrow at him, then says, “Yes, I do. And thank you.”

“Whatever,” Jackson says, and storms back to his own seat.

Derek’s clearly still worried about Stiles, his body tense and anxious, and every now and again he has to stop eating and just _hug_ Stiles, wrapping both arms around him and squeezing him tight, breathing in his scent. Stiles reassures him quietly that he’ll be all right, really, and that until Mikael calls there’s nothing they need to do so he might as well eat. Derek knows, and he’ll be okay for a little while, but then he’ll start to get worried again. Scott’s hovering, too, and makes Stiles drink some juice in addition to the coffee.

The rest of them are in a thoroughly celebratory mood, however. They’re all telling each other everything that happened since their separation, and a lot of people are talking at once. Aiden catches Ethan leaning over to talk quietly in Danny’s ear and starts teasing him about, “I get kidnapped and you go find a boyfriend, really?” causing both of them to flush pink.

Stiles tries to call his father, but the restaurant is just too loud, so after the initial, “We got Derek and the others,” he texts the details.

It’s almost ten when Mikael calls. Stiles gives him their whereabouts and he says he’ll be there in about half an hour. Everyone finishes eating – and they really have, between the lot of them, eaten enough to be worth three different people each. Stiles has another mug of coffee, heavy with cream and sugar. Derek digs in his wallet and produces two crisp fifty dollar bills that he slides underneath his mug for the waitress, who must be exhausted from constantly clearing their plates and refilling their drinks.

Once they’re waiting outside, Derek says, “I understand the plan. But what if things don’t go as planned?”

Stiles glances over at him. So does everyone else, and they wait for Stiles’ inevitable ‘they will’. Then Stiles says, “Then we fight our way out. As brutally as necessary.”

Derek lets out a breath and nods. “Okay.” He can deal with that.

Justin looks over. “How about you let us handle it?” he says. “They already want to kill us, anyway. And you can’t control us. It wouldn’t be your fault if we went wild and killed a bunch of hunters. No harm, no foul, right?”

Stiles gives him a wry smile and says, “While I appreciate the offer, if the shit really hits the fan, I don’t think I’m going to be able to _stop_ my pack from getting in on the action. We’ll just have to live with whatever consequences it brings.”

“Fair enough,” Justin says, and then Mikael is pulling up.

The blonde hunter parks his SUV in the fire lane and gets out, then runs an assessing gaze up and down Stiles, who’s leaning heavily on Derek. “You don’t look very good,” he says.

“Let’s try to work out why,” Stiles says dryly. “That spell Eli put on me is less ‘time bomb’ and more ‘slow insidious blood poisoning’.”

Mikael frowns. “That’s . . . not how he described it. I wouldn’t have – ”

“Oh, really?” It’s Scott who pushes forward, fury written on every inch of his face. “So you were totally okay with the idea of the spell that would just make Stiles’ head explode at the forty-eight hour mark, but you’re going to balk at the idea of one that just gradually made him sicker and sicker every minute? Tell me more about this fascinating code of morals you’ve got, Mr. Aronsson. I’m intrigued.”

Mikael’s frown deepens and he glares at Scott. “The idea was that he would have two days acting at full capacity. A spell that slowly drains him isn’t fair – ”

“Fair? Did you seriously just use the word ‘fair’ to describe the fact that you and your hunter buddies put a spell on my alpha that could have killed him if he didn’t do exactly as you said, regardless of _how_ it worked?”

“It was a compromise – ”

“No, asshole, a compromise would have been a tracking spell or a few hunters sent along with him to make sure he wouldn’t run like a _sensible_ person would have. This wasn’t a compromise, this was fucking extortion, brute intimidation done because they thought they could get away with it, and let me tell you about how little I’m going to let them get away with it.”

Mikael throws his hands up in surrender. “You act like it was my idea.”

“I act like you were supposed to make sure Stiles got in and out unharmed and you didn’t do your fucking job,” Scott snarls. “I act like Stiles risked his life to save your shitty, psychotic, specist children for no reason other than that it was the _right_ thing to do, and _this_ is how you repaid him.”

“Look, can we finish this up later?” Stiles interrupts. “We have things we need to do.” He looks at Mikael and ignores Scott’s glare. “How are things on your end?”

“Everything’s set up, but we’d better get moving,” Mikael says. He opens the door to the passenger side of the SUV. “You can – ”

“Stiles isn’t riding with you,” Derek says.

Mikael tries not to look exasperated. “I don’t give a damn who rides with me. Just make sure you follow.”

After some brief debate, Justin and the twins get into the car with Mikael, which seems mostly to be for the purpose of making the hunter uncomfortable. The others load up into the other cars. Scott shoos Stiles into the back of the Jeep where he can squash between Derek and Lydia. “We’re not done with this topic,” he says.

“No, really, I’m enjoying watching you hand his ass to him,” Stiles replies. “I just want to get this shit done, you know?” he adds, and Scott nods. They follow Mikael out of the suburb and along the scenic highway until they get back to the same elementary school they were at the day before.

Chris Argent is waiting outside for them. Allison is out of the car she’s been riding in while it’s practically still moving, and he grabs her in a tight hug. He’s also toting an extremely impressive-looking rifle. “That reminds me,” Stiles says, and reaches into the glove compartment of the Jeep to pull out his .38.

“You can’t go in armed,” Mikael snaps, as he sees Stiles checking the chamber of the gun as he gets out of the car.

“Last time I went in unarmed, someone tried to kill me,” Stiles says. The alphas are getting out of the SUV, and the other cars are pulling up. “Besides, they’re going to be so pissed about the fact that I brought my pack with me that they’re not going to give two shits about what they’ll consider a pea shooter.”

It’s difficult to argue with that. Stiles tucks the gun into his belt and Mikael shakes his head. Derek steps up beside Stiles and puts an arm around his waist. Stiles decides to allow it. It’ll support him but look like a gesture of affection, so he can lean on Derek without betraying how weak he is. Mikael opens the doors to the gymnasium and they all walk inside.

As it had happened almost exactly twenty-four hours previous, everything falls silent. The hunters are actively gaping at the huge pack that walks in. Several of them withdraw a few steps, but the majority stand their ground, and several of them actively go for weapons.

“Stand down!” Chris snaps, in that drill sergeant tone he gets when training.

“We come in peace,” Stiles says, and snickers despite himself. Several of his pack groan.

Stella steps forward, gun drawn but not aimed. “You can’t just walk in here and tell my men what to do,” she snarls at Chris.

“When they’re drawing weapons on people who are attending this meeting at your behest, then yes I damn well can,” Chris retorts. “You sent Stiles to find the traitor. He did. What are you going to do, shoot him for doing what you asked?”

“A lot of people here wouldn’t argue with that concept,” Stella says.

“There’s no need for this to be a bloodbath,” Mikael says.

“Then he shouldn’t have brought his _entire pack_ ,” Stella says.

“After what happened yesterday, can you really blame him?” Chris asks.

“Look, everyone knows that you’re just his boot-sniffing toady, but – ” Stella says, but before she’s finished her sentence, Allison has marched up to her and grabbed her by the wrist, wrenching her gun arm out to the side so she can’t fire. Her other hand comes up underneath Stella’s chin, grabbing her by the throat.

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t think finishing that sentence was going to be good for your health,” Allison says, with a sweet smile, “so I figured I’d better stop you before you got much further.”

Stella snarls and struggles. “Get her off me.”

“Allison,” Stiles says quietly.

Allison gives a nonchalant shrug and lets go – but not before giving Stella’s wrist a sharp twist that causes her to drop her gun. Allison scoops it up and tucks it away before heading back to her place in the pack.

“Can we just get this over with?” someone calls out.

Mikael checks his watch. “He’ll be here in a few minutes. I told him the meeting was at eleven.”

“Who’s ‘he’?” Stella asks, rubbing her neck and shooting a look of pure malice at Allison.

“Ruben Gutierrez,” Mikael says.

There’s a low murmur throughout the crowd. As Stiles had half-expected, nobody seems particularly surprised by Ruben being the traitor. Stella’s face draws into a grimace, but she doesn’t argue beyond saying, “Well, I hope you brought the proof that you promised.”

Mikael says nothing, although he gives her a dour look to show his annoyance. Stiles is about to ask what they should do until then, but Jackson surprises him by stepping forward and saying, “Which one of you guys is Eli?”

The bald little sorcerer raises his eyebrows and steps forward. “You are?”

Jackson further surprises Stiles by answering without his usual truculence, and in a tone that’s almost formal. “Jackson Whittemore. Druidic apprentice to Alan Deaton. And I’d like to know what the _hell_ you thought you were doing, casting dark magic on a human being. Magic designed to _kill_ , for Christ’s sake.”

Eli gives a little smile. “If he was being truthful, it wouldn’t kill him.”

“Uh, no, asshole,” Jackson says, dissolving back into his usual self. “Do you think I can’t see how that shit works? He could’ve been innocent as the Virgin Mary, and that spell still would’ve dropped him if he couldn’t prove it fast enough. Besides, that doesn’t matter. Nobody gives a shit _why_ you were using dark sorcery. You’re still not supposed to do it.”

At this, Eli laughs. “You’re a child. You don’t have the right to pass judgment on me.”

“Maybe not,” Jackson says, but takes a step back and says in a voice low enough that only the werewolves can hear, “but I know somebody who does.”

The doors swing open again and Ruben walks in with his usual smirk on his face. He stops dead only three steps into the room when he sees that it’s not just Stiles there, but Derek and the others as well. Something has clearly gone off the rails, but it’s too late now. The hunters closest to the door shuts the door behind him. After a pause, Ruben keeps walking forward, trying to appear casual. He sees that Stiles does indeed look as terrible as anticipated, and the smirk widens a little bit.

“I figured you’d have the animal tied up or something,” he remarks to Stella.

“Things got complicated,” Stella says, her voice sour, like if she had her way, Stiles would indeed be tied up until the spell finished killing him. “He says that you killed the hunters, not him.”

Ruben sneers at Stiles and says, “People will say all sorts of outrageous things when they’re begging for their lives.”

Stiles just offers him a quiet little smile and says, “I don’t beg, Mr. Gutierrez. I never beg. You were at the Conclave. You should have known better.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would just like to take a moment to mention how much I love Derek in this chapter. =D

 

There’s a flicker of uncertainty on Ruben’s face. Then Mikael steps forward and says, “I spoke to him this morning. This is the conversation we had.” He takes out his phone and taps the screen. His own voice plays from the recording a moment later. “Did you hear about what happened last night?”

“Another wolf attack, right?” Ruben replies on the tape. “I heard it was Andy and his guys. That’s another four dead to add to this asshole’s tally. When are we doing something about him?”

“Today,” Mikael says. And the recording abruptly ends.

Ruben blinks. “So what?”

“So,” a tall man says, pushing out of the crowd, “I’m not dead. None of my men are. Which means that you didn’t get that information off the rumor train. You already knew who had been attacked.”

Ruben’s jaw sags slightly. “I – I don’t – ”

“And if you knew that Andy was the target,” Stella says, her voice tight and angry, “and how many men were with him, that means that _you_ are the one who gave that information to the sorcerer. You set them up. You _bastard_.”

Ruben’s gaze flicks right and left, like he’s looking for an escape. Before he can even move, Chris grabs him by the arm and twists him around, forcing him to the ground with a knee in his back. “That’s five dead hunters because of you,” he says, pulling Ruben’s gun out of its holster and tucking it away. “You killed your own brothers, just for the sake of your pathetic pride.”

“It – it wasn’t like that!” Ruben protests. “I did it for everyone! This – this poisonous brat with his golden tongue, he’s brainwashed all of you! First Argent, now Aronsson too! I did it to protect you! He’s like a cancer, an infection. We have to purge him! I did what I had to do!”

“Hold the fuck up!” Stiles shouts. He pushes free from Derek and starts forward, losing his temper. “What the fuck have I _ever_ done to you that would make you think that? Have I lured you into traps? Tricked you into trusting werewolves that can’t be trusted? Promised some rosy future where everyone is friends with everyone? No! All I fucking said at the Conclave was that it _might_ benefit you guys to ask questions _before_ you start shooting us. It’s the same damned Code that the Argents have followed for centuries until Gerard went off the rails, and their family has flourished and is one of the biggest, most powerful hunting families in the world. Where is the fucking harm in what I proposed?”

Ruben struggles against Chris, who doesn’t give him an inch. “People can tell the truth for decades, waiting for the time to tell that one perfect lie.”

“Then don’t believe me!” Stiles yells. “Don’t take my advice. Don’t trust werewolves. Question everything. Do whatever makes you feel safe, tell all the others that you think I’m a lying asshole. But don’t you _dare_ try to make what you’ve done here about that. Don’t you dare try to take the high road over me, you piece of shit. I have _never_ hurt a single one of you, _even when_ you hit first.”

“He’s right,” Mikael says, but he’s addressing Stella, not Ruben. “Stiles isn’t the bad guy here.”

Stella huffs out a sigh and looks at Ruben in disgust. “Then what do we do with him?”

Derek steps up beside Stiles and says, “You can debate that in a minute. You – ” He stabs a finger at Eli. “Come take this spell off.”

“We’re conducting business here,” Stella snaps at Derek.

“You’re going to be conducting it with my foot up your ass if you don’t take this spell off him right fucking now,” Derek retorts.

Stella’s face grows tight and angry, but then she gives Eli a short, tight little gesture. The sorcerer sighs and steps forward. “Back away,” he says to Derek, who does so reluctantly. Stiles extends his arm, and Eli puts one hand underneath it, then one hand over the symbol. He starts tracing the lines of the hourglass with one finger, eyes closed in concentration.

Several minutes later, Stiles realizes he’s on the ground. He feels _amazing_. The absence of pain, in and of itself, has him writhing on the floor, giving little shudders that are practically post-orgasmic. He lets Derek gather him against one shoulder, petting his hair and running his fingers over his now blank forearm. “Ohhhhhhhm’fuckin’God,” Stiles slurs into his shirt. “Think I’mma pass out for a minute.”

Despite that, he’s struggling to his feet, and after a moment of grumbling, Derek helps him up. He lists and sways, but then gives a nod to the others. He sees the tension go out of them, all of the wolves relaxing a little, but there’s still a subtle anger in the air.

He’s about to ask what he missed while he was rolling around on the floor when he manages to tune in to the current conversation, which is Chris saying, “ – don’t think that’s the best idea.”

“Nobody asked for your input,” Stella says. “These murders were committed on my territory, which means that by the rules _you two_ helped create at the Conclave, I get to decide how to punish the perpetrator. And that’s what I choose. Death is too good for him. Imprisonment is my answer.”

Stiles is about to argue that he doubts jail is a great punishment to Ruben, when he sees that the hunter is pale and shaking underneath Chris’ grip. “What prison are we talking about here?” he asks. It takes two tries to get his tongue in working order so they can understand his question. “Are we talking about the kind of thing Oblivion runs?”

Chris slowly turns his gaze to him. He has a tight, almost nervous expression on his face, like he knows he’s about to give an answer Stiles won’t like. “No. It’s a hunter prison. It’s used for . . . monsters.”

“Since when do you guys imprison monsters?” Justin asks, frowning. “Last time I checked, you killed first and asked questions never.”

But Stiles’ gaze is trained on Chris. “You’re talking about the prison that Ian came from,” he says, and sees the blank look on the hunter’s face, then waves this aside. “The fear-based shifter, at the Conclave. Who had been imprisoned for decades. You’re talking about the prison where you run experiments on werewolves, so you know what voltage keeps them from shifting and how much wolfsbane will incapacitate but not kill. You’re talking about a God damned concentration camp.”

Chris lets out a breath, and nods. “Yes.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, “No.”

Chris grimaces, but doesn’t argue.

“I can’t stop you from running those places,” Stiles says, “and as has been ably demonstrated this weekend, not every hunter is going to agree with my views. I think the fact that such places exist is an abomination. The fact that you were willing to look the other way while they went on . . . well, I won’t lie, Chris, it does make me think a little bit less of you, but I’m sure we’ll get over it. I’m not going to ask questions about these prisons, although you should probably know that if I ever happen upon one of them, I will be staging a jailbreak of epic proportions. In the short-term, however, Ruben is _not_ going into one.”

“You’re going to protect him?” Eli sounds amused.

“No,” Stiles says, and pulls out his .38. “I’m just going to express my opinion. This is not Nazi Germany. Or if you don’t like that metaphor, you aren’t Greek gods and this asshole isn’t Sisyphus. If he escapes – ”

“You can’t escape,” Stella snaps.

“ _If he escapes_ ,” Stiles says, with even more emphasis, “he’ll just come after me again. There are some people I’m willing to show mercy to. Some people that I will let walk away. But he is not one of them. I’m not leaving this room until he’s dead, if I have to shoot him myself.”

“I agree,” Mikael says.

“Fine,” Stella snarls, “but we can’t kill him here. Get him up.”

Chris nods and stands, hauling Ruben to his feet. At the last possible second, he lunges free of Chris’ grip, grabbing Stiles around the throat and wrenching the gun out of his hand. Stiles lets out a little cry, but he’s too weak to stop him. He finds himself pinned against Ruben’s chest, his own gun pressed into his cheek. His wolves are snarling and growling with distress, but they don’t dare make a move as Ruben backs against the wall.

Unable to help it, Stiles starts to laugh. “Boy, you really are the posterchild of bad decision making,” he wheezes. “You think that using me as a human shield is going to get you anywhere in _this_ crowd?”

“Shut up,” Ruben says, pushing the gun harder into his cheek. “Everyone get out from between me and the door!”

“You really think my pack is all you have to worry about?” Stiles asks. “You’d better just shoot me now, motherfucker, because there are a lot of people in this crowd who won’t hesitate to put a bullet through me if it gets them you. Hell, Chris such an ace shot that, given the height difference, he could probably kill you without doing more than puncturing one of my lungs, right, Chris?”

“Shut up!” Ruben shouts, a note of hysteria in his voice. He’s sliding along the wall as the wolves pace and stalk in front of him. “Back off!” he shouts, waving the gun at them. They snarl a little but back away.

“Or how about Allison, she could probably put a bolt in your eye without even scratching me,” Stiles says. “You’ve lost, you asshole, you better just shoot me because at least then you will have accomplished _something_ before you die in a bloody spectacle. That’s what you wanted, right? To take down the boy in red? Or is it that you don’t have the balls?”

“Shut up, shut up, _shut up_!” Ruben screams.

“Shoot me!” Stiles shouts back. “Pull the trigger, you coward, do it, make something of your miserable little life, have your last minute of glory, pull the fucking trigger!”

Ruben does.

There’s the hollow little click of an empty chamber.

A brief moment of startled silence follows and then Derek just lunges forward, shifting into the partial form as he goes. Stiles wrenches himself to the side with what little strength he has left, and Derek’s jaws sink into Ruben’s throat. Blood goes everywhere; it gushes onto Stiles in a warm flood. Ruben lets out a strangled scream, and then there’s a crunch of bone and it ends abruptly.

There’s a gunshot, then another, and Derek’s form jerks a little with a grunt, and then Chris is shouting, “Hold your fire, for fuck’s sake!” and there’s another shot and everything dissolves into chaos.

When the gunfire stops, several hunters are on the floor, pinned down, including Stella. Derek and Stiles are being shielded from the crowd by two layers of alpha werewolves. Blood is dripping down Justin’s chin, but he gives Stiles a smirk as he stands up and shakes it off. Stiles immediately sees what’s happened. The alphas, knowing that they could take the damage better, had shoved down Stiles’ own pack members and gotten between Stiles and the guns. The hunters that have been taken down don’t have a werewolf mark on them, but they’re bruised from the butt of Chris’ rifle and Mikael’s fists. One of them has a crossbow bolt in his ankle. Stiles gives Allison a questioning look. She shrugs, as if to say, ‘he didn’t stop shooting when I gave him the warning shot’.

“Were any of those bullets wolfsbane?” Chris is shouting, and this is met with a general negative. “Silver?”

Two of them were spiked with it, but neither made critical shots. Mikael sits down to dig one of them out of Justin’s shoulder. The other ripped through Aiden’s arm and left a nasty mark, but it’s already partially healed. “You’ll have to do better than that,” Justin says, smirking at the hunters. Yasmin smacks him in the unwounded shoulder.

Derek got hit in the gut with the first shot, but his body is already trying to push the bullet out. Scott digs it out the rest of the way, and he snarls a little but nods in thanks. Meanwhile, the hunters are getting themselves sorted out. “How many down?” Stella asks.

“Uh . . . none,” Andy replies.

There’s a pause. “None . . .?” Stella asks.

“None,” Andy repeats. “They didn’t kill any of us.”

“Well, hey, you saw Derek go all wolfy and rip a guy’s throat out with his teeth, I don’t blame you for overreacting a little,” Stiles says. “Can’t just go killing anyone who shoots at us, right? That would be downright uncivilized.”

Mikael presses a hand against his face. He looks like he’s trying not to laugh. Chris just sighs and shakes his head.

“I did warn him,” Derek says, clutching Stiles to his chest, “that if he touched you, I would do exactly that.”

“This whole adventure is making me very nostalgic,” Stiles says thoughtfully. “Tracking down people with their phones. Nearly needing to cut my arm off. Having you threaten to rip people’s throats out with your teeth. It’s like my sophomore year all over again.”

“I think a few things have changed,” Justin says, helping him to his feet.

“Just a few,” Stiles agrees.

Stella’s face twists into a scowl. “You got what you wanted. Now get out.”

Stiles glances over at her as the hackles of every wolf start to rise. Then he looks down at Ruben’s body with a pensive expression. “You know the sad thing,” he says, “is that in the end, I think that Ruben was right. This whole alliance thing? It’s never going to work.” He looks back over at Stella. “But that’s on you guys. Not on us. You can’t say I didn’t give it my best shot. I thought people like Kate and Gerard were exceptions rather than the rule, but I guess maybe I was wrong. If I have to pick a side, and it’s looking increasingly likely that I will, then it’s not going to be yours.”

He turns and heads for the doors with his pack and the alpha pack on his heels. Chris follows, and after a moment, so does Mikael.

“You all right?” Mikael asks, somewhat gruffly, once they’re outside.

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “Could use about twenty hours of sleep, but I’m okay.”

“Why in God’s name was your gun unloaded?” Chris asks.

Stiles just laughs a little. “Oh, come on,” he says. “Ruben trying to kill me? Who didn’t see that coming?”

Chris shakes his head a little. He’s about to reply when another car pulls up. The door opens and Deaton gets out, looking as calm and unhurried as ever. He smiles at them and gives Stiles a nod.

“What are you doing here?” Stiles asks, surprised.

“Oh, I heard something about a warlock in the area that was using his magic to terrorize and harm innocent people,” Deaton says. “Thought I would come look into it.”

Stiles looks back at the building. “What are you going to do to him?”

“Strip him of his magic, most likely,” Deaton says, “but it’s not entirely my decision to make. He’ll be brought before the Druidic Council.” When Stiles gives him a questioning look, he says, “Something I’ve been putting together since Stone died. A governing body, to prevent the misuse and abuse of sorcery.”

“If you go in there, they’ll try to eat you alive,” Scott says.

Deaton just smiles. “I think I can handle myself,” he says, and goes into the building without another word. Jackson gives them an awkward little wave, then follows Deaton, with Wilma on his heels.

Stiles shakes his head a little and checks his watch. It’s almost noon. He’s starting to wish that they had waited for breakfast. Now that the spell is off him, he’s starving. He also wants coffee. There’s a pause while he thinks things through. His brain still doesn’t seem to be functioning on all cylinders, although he supposes that has nothing to do with the spell and everything to do with the fact that he’s barely slept in days.

It’s an eleven hour drive back to Beacon Hills. If they leave right away, they could make it there by midnight, but there are a few things he wants to do first, and to be fair he doesn’t know if anyone will be up to driving without getting some sleep first. He jolts a little as he remembers something. “Fuck. Before anything else – Mac, call your parents. You’re supposed to be home tonight.”

“Fuuuuuuuuck,” Mac says, and coming from her, who typically doesn’t swear, several of the pack members giggle. “When _will_ we be home?”

Stiles lets out a breath. “Is anyone up to driving?”

As it turns out, most of the alpha pack thinks they will be. They had fallen asleep in a pile after dinner the night before, so although Stiles had woken them around three AM to swoop to the rescue, they had all gotten at least six solid hours of sleep. They’re used to keeping odd hours and constantly adjusting due to travel, Yasmin says, so this is nothing new for them.

“I can take a few people in my car, too,” Chris offers.

They have three cars of their own, and the alpha pack has two, but Justin says they can return one of them since they’ll only have four drivers. Stiles’ head aches trying to do the logistics, so Lydia takes over, giving Yasmin the keys to the Jeep, Ethan the keys to Danny’s car, and Mei the keys to her own. Ravinder can drive the alpha pack’s car. Justin, Stiles, and Derek can go with Yasmin. Aiden, Danny, and Mac can go with Ethan, leaving Erica and Lydia with Mei, Isaac and Boyd with Ravinder, and Allison and Scott riding with Chris. Even if they don’t make it all the way back to Beacon Hills, Lydia reasons, they can stop halfway and be there earlier the next day.

“We need to clean up the cabin first,” Stiles says, and Ravinder points out that the alpha pack still has belongings at the lodge they were originally staying at, and should probably formally check out of that hotel.

Mac gets on the phone with her parents. “Hi, Mom! I just wanted to let you know I might be late tonight, okay?” She laughs. “No, we meant to leave first thing but we were up really late last night, and an early start just was _not_ in the cards. No, we’ll drive safe, I promise. Yes, if we get tired we’ll stop for the night and I’ll call you, I promise. Love you! See you soon!” She hangs up and looks pensively at the phone. “I’ll have to tell them the truth,” she finally says. “I don’t think this is the last time something like this will happen.”

“More’s the pity,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes. “Hey, while we’re taking care of business, any chance you two fine gentlemen can go clean up the mess we made in Gabriel Khan’s house?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Mikael says with a nod.

Scott narrows his eyes at Mikael. “And?” he says.

Mikael looks at him. “Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack,” Scott says, and several people start snickering again.

Mikael stares at him for a long moment before letting out a sigh, turning to Stiles, and saying, “I apologize. I shouldn’t have let them put that spell on you.” His voice is grudging.

“And?” Scott prompts again. “Nothing like that will ever happen on your watch again, right?”

“For the love of – ” Mikael says, and then sees the look on Scott’s face and lifts his hands in surrender. “If it’s in my power to prevent it, no.”

“Good enough, I guess,” Scott says, and then slings an arm around Stiles’ shoulders and starts walking away.

Behind them, they hear Mikael say to Chris, “Did I just get my ass handed to me by an eighteen year old?”

“It’s almost obnoxious, how good a person he is,” Chris agrees.

Stiles grins and gets into the Jeep. “Feeling better?” he asks Scott.

“It’ll have to do,” Scott grumbles. Stiles just laughs and slumps against his shoulder, closing his eyes. He’s sound asleep long before they get back to the cabin, and the others elect to leave him there, but the sound of the door opening and closing wakes him up. He agrees to take it easy. They get the cabin cleaned up and wash the sheets and blankets of the beds they used. Boyd and Isaac go to a grocery store to replace the food they ate. The alpha pack has gone to gather their things from their previous hotel. Jackson calls to say he’s going to go back with Deaton, if they can grab his stuff. Derek gets some supplies and fixes the back door, which Ravinder had broken on his way in with Mei.

Stiles spends most of this time on the sofa, snuggling with at least two wolves and ‘supervising’. When the others return, Ravinder has, as promised, procured a bottle of wine and a thank you card. Stiles jots a quick note on the inside of the card which reads, “Sorry we used your place. We got lost and were freezing and freaked out. We replaced everything we ate and washed everything we used. Please accept this as a thank you gift.” Then he has all of them sign it, first names only.

While the others are loading up the car, he says to Justin, “You guys should stay a few days in Beacon Hills. You know, lay low for a little while, crash at my place.”

“Sounds good to me,” Justin says. “I think we could all use the downtime.”

“You haven’t been there since we built the den,” Stiles says. “You’ll like it.” He looks pensively at the bottle of wine and the card, which he’s left on the kitchen table, front and center. “We’re the good guys, right?”

Justin frowns a little. “Yeah, I think so.”

“I mean, we didn’t have to do this,” Stiles says, gesturing to the wine. “We cleaned up, we replaced everything we used. They probably never would have even known we were here. They clearly only come here in the summer. Even if we moved some shit around, who’s going to remember where they left the TV remote when they left nine months ago?”

“Yeah,” Justin says. “I mean, I want to be a good guy. I know that my job is to rule with an iron fist and shit, but . . . it just seemed like doing it that way wasn’t working.”

“I like the way you’re doing it now,” Stiles offers.

“Thanks,” Justin says. “I thought the whole hunter alliance thing wasn’t a bad idea.”

“Too bad it’s clearly never going to work,” Stiles says.

“I don’t know about that,” Justin replies. “From what I’ve heard, it seems more and more like the hunters are splitting into two factions. The ones like Argent and the ones like we met today.” He shrugs. “Time will tell. But I don’t know if we can ever break it down into ‘good guys and bad guys’. Things aren’t morally black and white like that. Not in our world.”

“I guess you’re right,” Stiles says, with a sigh. “All we can do is try to do what we think is right.”

“Yeah.” Justin yawns and stretches. “Come on, I’m beat. Let’s try to put some miles behind us before we stop for the night.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry that this chapter wound up being so short. Hopefully it'll make up for some of the previous chapters. ^_^ *blows kisses* Have a lovely weekend, readers! I hope you've enjoyed the fic!
> 
> For further updates for TSOIP or any of my other fics, feel free to come poke at [my tumblr](http://gingersnapwolves.tumblr.com)!

 

In the end, they drive straight through. By the time the alphas are too worn out to drive, most of the others have slept enough in the car that they’re up to it, so they switch off several times. A few of them are forbidden from driving, like Stiles and Derek, but the others manage ably enough. They get back around midnight and crash at the den, too tired to do anything other than collapse into a pile.

The next morning, groceries are a must, and all the teenagers need to check in with their parents, particularly Boyd and Danny, who want to make sure that their parents haven’t had a nervous breakdown in the intervening few days since finding out their children were werewolves. Stiles just wants to bake and relax, so Derek gives the alphas a tour of the den and the property, which has everybody impressed. Then Justin says, “So which room is okay to have sex in?” and Derek grumbles and points him to the spare bedroom that is typically used for this purpose and nobody talks about it, and then they don’t see Justin and Yasmin for several hours.

Somewhere in there, Stiles realizes that it’s New Year’s Eve, and obviously they should have a party. So he dispatches people back to the grocery store to get chips and sodas, and then his father shows up to deliver a thorough lecture on why he shouldn’t go looking for trouble (but he’s proud of Stiles for causing all the right kinds of trouble and always looking out for his friends).

“So what’s up with you and Mei, anyway?” Stiles asks Ravinder as he mixes eggs and vanilla for the cookies he’s making. Ravinder pretends not to know what he means. Stiles gives him an unimpressed look and says, “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

Ravinder sighs. “I met her when she was quite young, you know. It’s somewhat awkward to find yourself developing feelings for someone that you met when she was thirteen and you were twenty-four.”

“She’s not thirteen anymore,” Stiles points out.

“Believe it or not, I’m aware,” Ravinder says. “But you must understand . . . when Kali was in charge, it was better not to betray any sort of vulnerability.”

“Mm,” Stiles says, “you really should do something about that now that Kali’s not in charge anymore.”

“You speak of such things as if they’re easy,” Ravinder says.

“Well, being in that Mei is standing in the doorway and has heard every word of the conversation we just had, I think it’s about to get much easier,” Stiles says, smirking at him.

Ravinder blinks at him, then gives a half-turn to see Mei blushing somewhat shyly. “Alphas can hide their scent, you know,” she says, with a sweet smile.

“And I could not hear you over the mixer,” Ravinder says, shaking his head a little and glancing at Stiles as if to say ‘well played’. “Shall we talk about this in privacy?” he adds, extending a hand to her. Mei slides her fingers in between Ravinder’s and nods, still smiling, and the two of them walk out of the kitchen.

“You’re welcome!” Stiles shouts after them.

Derek looks over from where he’s sketching. “You’re the worst sort of person,” he says, but he’s smiling.

“Doin’ what I can with what I got,” Stiles says, grinning back, and starts whistling Auld Lang Syne as he fishes out the next ingredients he needs for the cookies.

“What’s up with the bathroom upstairs?” Justin asks when he finally wanders downstairs somewhat later and starts burning his mouth on the cookies that just came out of the oven. “It’s a wreck.”

“We’re putting a Jacuzzi in,” Derek tells him.

“Oh my fucking Christ, are you serious?” Justin asks. “That’s it. Screw this ‘travel the world and judge alphas’ business. We’re settling here and moving in. I don’t care what anyone else thinks of it.”

Yasmin comes in behind him and wraps an arm around his waist, laughing. “Not you. Your itchy feet would get to you in less than a week.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Justin says. “Fuck, on that note, I could use a run. There’s plenty enough space around here, and after all that time cooped up in the basement and then in the fucking car, I need to stretch my legs. Who’s with me?”

“Pass,” Stiles says. “Too much to do.”

“I’ll stay here,” Yasmin says. “You wore me out,” she adds, with a wicked smile.

Several of the others decide to go with him, though. Isaac, Boyd, Erica, and Lydia decide to join him. So do the twins, and when Ethan decides to go, Danny decides to go along. They all shift and leave their clothes in a pile on the floor. Yasmin walks over to Stiles and settles down at the kitchen table. “I didn’t really mean to become an alpha,” she says. “Like you, I had no idea it would happen.”

Stiles glances over at her, then pours her a glass of water and sets it down next to her before turning back to the next batch of cookies.

“I’d only been a werewolf a few months,” she says. “This was down in Argentina, where I’m from. I lived in a rural village, and an alpha had moved in and started turning people. I had no idea what was happening to me, but I was afraid I would hurt my family, so I ran away. I went to Buenos Aries. There was another alpha there. He was building . . . a harem. Collecting pretty werewolf ladies. He tried to force himself on me, and I killed him. I didn’t even mean to, not really. Then I was suddenly an alpha, with this pack of traumatized, victimized women. I didn’t know what to do with them, didn’t know what to do with a pack, so I tried to get them the help they needed and then sent them back to wherever they had come from. Then Kali showed up with the alpha pack. I fell in love with Justin . . . instantly. I knew it shouldn’t happen like that, but Kali was making sneering remarks about how no alpha would disband her own pack, and I was tired and sick and frightened half out of my wits, and Justin stood up for me. It wasn’t the first time he and Kali really got into it, but I guess it was the first time he refused to back down.

“They couldn’t give me the trial, since I had no pack, and Justin wanted to bring me with them. Kali didn’t, and she convinced the twins to side with her, so it was Justin, Mei, and Ravinder against Kali and the twins. I didn’t know what to do, because I was afraid to go with them, but I didn’t know what I would do if I stayed behind, and I didn’t want Justin to leave. Eventually, Justin just declared that I was coming with them and he didn’t give a fuck what anyone else thought of it, and Kali caved. She was afraid, even then, to challenge him too much. Afraid that he would win. So instead I joined the alpha pack and Kali spend the next six months tormenting me while Justin and I tried to pretend we weren’t in love because we knew that it would only make Kali more pissed off and make things worse. And neither of us were born wolves, neither of us even knew the _word_ lupa, so we really had no idea what was happening to us . . .

“Ravinder finally sat us down and explained to us that the more we denied it, the worse it was going to get. Which . . . led to a pretty amazing night, really.” Yasmin laughs despite herself. “And it did make things worse with Kali. We just tried not to let it get to us. We had enough problems with hunters and rogue alphas to have so much infighting. But Justin and I . . . we had talked about leaving. We were still talking about that when we came here for the first time, and met you.”

Stiles slides a sheet of cookies into the oven. “Sometimes it’s funny the way things work out,” he says.

Yasmin laughs again. “Can’t deny that. But I’m just saying. I’m really glad we came here.”

“Hey, I am, too,” Stiles says. “You helped me and Derek get things worked out. My life made _so_ much more sense after that.”

Derek glances up from his sketch and scowls in his usual, familiar way. Stiles just smiles back and tosses him a cookie. Derek snatches it out of the air and stuffs it into his mouth.

The wolves come back from their run after that. About half of them stay in wolf form, and half of them shift back. Erica and Lydia, as is their wont, just leave their clothes off and head over to the plates of cookies. There’s a pause for general consumption. “So you guys just wander around naked?” Justin asks, frowning a little. He shifted back and pulled his jeans back on.

“Too much effort when you’re shifting back and forth all the time,” Erica says. “Why, you like what you see?”

Justin smirks at her, but it’s Ravinder who speaks up. “The general lack of modesty is a little discomfiting.”

Danny and Boyd both look over from where they’re munching. They look at each other, then at Derek. Almost accusingly, Boyd says, “You told us this was normal.”

“It is normal,” Derek snaps.

“You said that in born wolf families it is,” Danny says. “Ravinder’s from a born wolf family, and he thinks you’re weird.”

“Ravinder’s repressed,” Derek retorts.

“Difficult to argue with that,” Yasmin says, with her mouth full.

“You’d have to leave clothes everywhere if you were going to get dressed every time you shifted back and forth,” Derek says. “Or have a backpack or something to carry them around with you. Who would want to bother with that? It’s just nudity. You’re not going to go blind.”

“So basically . . . you’re lazy,” Justin says.

Derek frowns. “I . . . guess?”

“Cool,” Justin says, and grabs another cookie. Ravinder just looks disappointed in everyone. Mei laughs quietly and puts an arm around his waist, tucking her head against his shoulder. “Hey, for the sake of complete nostalgia, I vote that we have a Street Fighter tournament.”

“Fuck _yeah_ ,” Erica says, and darts for the room with the entertainment center.

“Remember the rules, Erica!” Stiles shouts after her. “Your boobs are weapons of mass distraction!”

“Oh, fine!” she calls back. “I’ll get dressed!

They spend a large chunk of the afternoon and evening playing video games, watching movies, and stuffing their faces with food. Then they start sharing war stories, and Stiles is telling them about what happened at the Conclave, and the details of Sebastian Stone, while the alphas share stories about the alphas they’ve tested and how things have changed.

At five to midnight, Stiles flips channels so they can watch the ball drop at Times Square. They do the countdown and share hugs and kisses, and Stiles lifts his glass of sparkling Mountain Dew and says, “We survived another one! Happy new year!”

“And many more,” Justin says, and there’s a riot of noise as everyone clinks glasses.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Line in the Sand [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9922169) by [Opalsong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opalsong/pseuds/Opalsong)




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